“I’m obsessed with coffee.”
― Ben Miller
“Every meal is so important and colours the rest of your day – my whole day can go into a spin if I make the wrong choice at lunchtime!”
― Ben Miller
“I’m very lucky, I had a very amicable separation and very amicable divorce, but it was still horrendous.”
― Ben Miller
“I’m prepared to try to talk to a very beautiful girl. I learned a fantastic secret, which is that the most beautiful woman in the room is not being spoken to because she’s too intimidating. They’re not looking for somebody beautiful; they’re looking for somebody to amuse them.”
― Ben Miller
“I’d like to see the argument made for greater worldwide federalism, not just the European Union.”
― Ben Miller
“I’ve turned down all sorts of good things accidentally, too. I read the script for ‘Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind’ and thought, ‘This makes no sense.’ Then I went to the cinema to see it. Well, what an idiot.”
― Ben Miller
“’Death In Paradise’ is my dream job – a fascinating character, great scripts, superb cast, and shooting in the Caribbean with French catering.”
― Ben Miller
“I’ve always loved science, but I was never going to make much of a contribution. I’m better off having science as a hobby.”
― Ben Miller
“I got my first Mac in 1984. I’ve got an Airbook, iPad, iPhone, the lot. I love that blend of technology, creativity, and design.”
― Ben Miller
“On ‘Death In Paradise,’ I had a CGI pet lizard and had to react to nothing, which was hideously embarrassing.”
― Ben Miller
“I was an early adopter of everything from Myspace to Twitter, and I think they’re just fads, like CB radio.”
― Ben Miller
“I want to get across that science is something that we all have ownership of and we can all take an interest in. We don’t all have to understand complex theories, but we should have a working knowledge, like knowing your way round the engine of your car.”
― Ben Miller
“Science is a hobby, and I’m really into it, but it’s not my job. My job is to learn about comedy and to make people laugh. Science, for me, is probably a bit like Danny Baker’s love of football or Rod Stewart’s obsession with train sets.”
― Ben Miller
“Everyone was doing alternative comedy. I thought I’d distinguish myself by just telling jokes, with differing degrees of success.”
― Ben Miller
“The first-ever job I had was in a play, ‘Trench Kiss,’ with Caroline Quentin and Arthur Smith.”
― Ben Miller
“I’m one of those people that read a newspaper.”
― Ben Miller
“I’d rather sink with a bad theory than swim with muddy pragmatism.”
― Ben Miller
“I’m writing a science book – a sort of compendium of all the ways I’ve found of explaining things to my artsy friends over the years.”
― Ben Miller
“Nobody wants to get divorced.”
― Ben Miller
“I slept on a friend’s kitchen floor for a year and a half.”
― Ben Miller
“I’m a huge fan of French comedy. The French play comedy in a slightly different way than we do: they play it with a sort of realism that we don’t necessarily often do ourselves.”
― Ben Miller
“I enjoyed learning French, and I enjoyed speaking French.”
― Ben Miller
“There’s something wonderful about that sort of Poirot, Agatha Christie-style investigation: cross-questioning all the witnesses and checking their stories, looking for means, motive, and opportunity.”
― Ben Miller
“I was on holiday in Ibiza, having a lovely time, writing a book and looking at the stars every night and generally not having a care in the world. Then I got sent the script for ‘Death in Paradise.’ I couldn’t get back to England in time for the auditions, so my girlfriend filmed me on her camera, and I sent it off via email.”
― Ben Miller
“It’s my theory that comedy is going to die out in the year 6000.”
― Ben Miller
“Things like ‘The Office,’ and arguably shows like ‘The Only Way Is Essex,’ are comedies, just using real people in real situations.”
― Ben Miller
“Comedy’s about things the way they are. It’s about the world as it is, not the world as we would like it to be, and science is the same, really.”
― Ben Miller
“Personally, I think people need to get over this ‘being offended’ thing. Being offended does not give you the right to silence people. I get offended by things all the time – it’s just part of life. The right not to be offended is not a human right, especially in a democracy.”
― Ben Miller
“I get dissatisfied really easily, and I have to constantly keep moving; I have to constantly keep doing things. I find it very hard to switch off.”
― Ben Miller
“Definitely the most important thing in my life is being a father.”
― Ben Miller
“More than anything, I enjoy making people laugh.”
― Ben Miller
“I’m always a bit wary when people say in interviews, ‘I’m at the happiest place of my life that I’ve ever been.’ I think, ‘Really? Are you?’ Life is a mix, isn’t it?”
― Ben Miller
“I studied physics at university, and I’m still a sucker for an experiment or scientific theory.”
― Ben Miller
“Actually I don’t mind the gym when I get there, but I hate the psychological battle I have to go through to get there.”
― Ben Miller
“Bob Dylan – I will listen to any of his songs over and over.”
― Ben Miller
“Comedy is my proper job. It’s what I should be doing, and when I do other bits like my science series, I miss it.”
― Ben Miller
“I’m really spectacularly thick in all areas of my life except comedy and science. I’m crap at everything else.”
― Ben Miller
“This is a shameful thing to say, but I’ve never really got that ‘grown-up’ mind-set. I have to buy forks? Why?”
― Ben Miller
“My father was always clowning around. It was a huge influence on me. In my family, everything is turned into a joke.”
― Ben Miller
“For my mother, everything stands in relation to her Welshness; the fact she married an Englishman seems to be something of an issue. She’s kind of anti-English… anti-imperialist.”
― Ben Miller
“I very much wanted the perfect nuclear family, and I came from the perfect nuclear family, but like so many people, that isn’t the way things have worked out.”
― Ben Miller
“Children basically need one thing: to be played with.”
― Ben Miller
“I used to fantasise about being able to stay up all night; now I fantasise about how early I can go to bed. Tragic isn’t it?”
― Ben Miller
“I’ve been going bald since I was about 17. I’m still hanging on to my hair for dear life, but I do sometimes wonder – should I get a wig?”
― Ben Miller
“I’m not a ‘suffer in silence’ type; I’m a ‘let’s throw money at the problem’ type – I’ve done reflexology, reiki, psychotherapy, counselling. I’ve never actually had analysis, but I’d like to try that sometime.”
― Ben Miller
“I did a very stupid diet where you have three food groups, and you never eat them together. It’s so bloody tedious; I’m losing the will to live just describing it. I managed to stay very thin because you spent your life wandering around starving hungry looking for a chickpea to go with a chicken leg.”
― Ben Miller
“You meet every different kind of possible person from different ethnic and cultural background, and after you while, you realise it’s all just people, isn’t it?”
― Ben Miller
“My enthusiasm for L.A. stems from my father, who was a lecturer in American literature at the University of Birmingham. Through his work, our family did several house swaps with L.A. families. It was a dreadfully daring thing to do in the early 1980s; there was no Internet, so you had no idea of what you were getting into.”
― Ben Miller
“Initially, the best thing about being in L.A. was the girls – they loved me. It was like being a pop star.”
― Ben Miller
“I go back to L.A. as often as I can, and even if I’m there on business, I always add on a few extra days for pleasure.”
― Ben Miller
“L.A.’s hippies are actually quite scary – more like Hell’s Angels than the Haight-Ashbury hippies of San Francisco.”
― Ben Miller
“Much as I respect Russell Brand’s point of view, I’m in the opposite camp to him about voting. I think it’s enormously important to engage with the electoral process.”
― Ben Miller
“Everything in politics is so stage-managed.”
― Ben Miller
“I adored ‘Drop the Dead Donkey.’ That show defined Channel 4 at the time; it was so inventive and off the leash.”
― Ben Miller
“I can be indecisive about things – and the less important something is, the more indecisive I am.”
― Ben Miller
“Life is a mystery: you’ve just got to go with it.”
― Ben Miller
“Probably one of the reasons I became a comedian is that you get a chance to control when people laugh at you.”
― Ben Miller
“I work out in the Caribbean for half the year, playing a detective who’s really into science. Anybody who knows me will tell you that’s a dream come true. But it’s tough for my family. We only get to see each other every two and a half to three weeks.”
― Ben Miller
“That was one of the amazing things about Doctor Who. Considering it is such an enormous charabanc, a centerpiece of international TV, it feels incredibly small when you are actually involved in it. It is very intimate, very small; it feels like a few people messing about with a camera.”
― Ben Miller
“I have always played a slightly ineffectual, bumbly, nice guy.”
― Ben Miller
“It was only in the second year of my Ph.D. that I started acting. I wasn’t in school plays or anything; I was in bands, but I wasn’t cool. There’s no such thing as a cool physics person, is there?”
― Ben Miller
“All men in their 40s want to be in rock bands, and I reserve the right to be in a pub band at some point.”
― Ben Miller
“One of the saddest things I’ve ever done is download ‘I’m A Teenage Dirtbag’ by Wheatus and play along with it with my headphones on. Oh, God. If you were to walk in and see me do that, you would really worry for me.”
― Ben Miller
“I’d like to have a neck. Everyone else has a neck, but I never got one; I don’t know what happened. I’m not asking for much: just some sort of separation between my head and my body would be great.”
― Ben Miller
“My kids are blissfully unaware of anything I do. I asked my four-year-old, Harrison, what I did, and he said, ‘You’re an electrician.’ He must have seen me changing a lightbulb.”
― Ben Miller
“We all know to eat green vegetables and oily fish, but who does that? I’ll have a cake, thanks.”
― Ben Miller
“Prostate cancer has taken a lot from me. First it took my grandfather and then my dad.”
― Ben Miller
“I love the basic comedy of growing a moustache.”
― Ben Miller
“I think poshness is very funny! But I think it’s also delightful. There’s something wonderful and very innocent about it, particularly with the Edwardians.”
― Ben Miller
“It’s great to do stuff that ‘gets you out of the house’ in a way – that gets you to meet other people!”
― Ben Miller
“You need to take a little break sometimes. Then, hopefully, you get some more lead in your pencil, and you’re raring to go again!”
― Ben Miller
“I took my son to an exhibition about inventing things, and he was so inspired he started collecting toilet rolls and empty bottles for his own ‘inventions.’”
― Ben Miller
“I used to go badger-watching as a boy, and it’s brilliant fun – they’re incredibly active animals, and the cubs are very funny to watch.”
― Ben Miller
“Our annual school physics trip was always to Blackpool Pleasure Beach, as it’s such a good example of Newtonian physics. You can learn about centrifugal force and Newton’s first law from the roller coasters, and the Viking long boat is a giant pendulum. It’s good for children to understand that science underpins all these brilliant things.”
― Ben Miller
“I once played a character called Mr. Jonathan in something called ‘Razzle Dazzle.’ I was a choreographer of children’s pageants. That was something I never imagined doing. It did great in Australia.”
― Ben Miller
“Acting and writing are the things I like doing. I don’t like presenting that much.”
― Ben Miller
“I’m a have-a-go dad. I like babies.”
― Ben Miller
“I’ve never really had a plan. You never know what’s going to happen.”
― Ben Miller
“I like to think of myself as focused in work, but it probably comes across as obsessive.”
― Ben Miller
“I don’t think you get a lot of comedians who are homeopaths. Comedy is essentially about not being hoodwinked.”
― Ben Miller
“I did play a romantic part once – Orsino in ‘Twelfth Night.’”
― Ben Miller
“As with anything that involves emotional pain, comedy isn’t too far behind. There’s that element of no matter how painful something is – as long as it is not you that is going through it – it can be funny.”
― Ben Miller
“As an actor, it’s good to try to do new things, I think.”
― Ben Miller
“As a committed Whovian, I cannot believe my luck in joining the Twelfth Doctor for one of his inaugural adventures. My only worry is that they’ll make me leave the set when I’m not filming.”
― Ben Miller
“I’m not afraid to say it – I’m proud to be from a nation that wears its heart on its sleeve and isn’t scared to show its feelings.”
― Ben Miller
“Oh, I assure you, science is anything but boring.”
― Ben Miller
“Galactic plankton is undoubtedly out there, but it’s statistically highly likely there’s also another intelligent civilisation out there somewhere. Unfortunately, the distances and time differences are so great, communication might remain impossible.”
― Ben Miller
“Science was always a passion, but I also loved ‘Monty Python’ and ‘The Young Ones,’ and I discovered the Footlights comedy club at university, where a lot of those people got their start. I had a go and loved it immediately. After that, I just couldn’t stop writing sketches, and it all took off from there.”
― Ben Miller
“Being away from my family for six months a year – even if it was in the beautiful surroundings of Guadeloupe in the Caribbean – was just too hard.”
― Ben Miller
“The one thing that makes me laugh about the phrase ‘the worst week of my life’ is that nobody actually uses that phrase when something really bad happens.”
― Ben Miller
“I live a pretty sedentary life, usually. I’m not an action man at all.”
― Ben Miller
“I’d probably be one of these terribly over-protective parents whose children become a neurotic wreck because they’ve never been exposed to real life.”
― Ben Miller
“People think I’m Rob Brydon a lot.”
― Ben Miller
“You can reveal yourself on stage in a way that you can’t on TV. If you drop a character on TV, it’s death. Each character has to be ruthlessly, faultlessly played. But live, you can hint at what’s going on behind. You can let the audience in a bit and go off the script.”
― Ben Miller
“It’s the classic thing – children’s TV gets watched by everybody, not just children. ‘Horrible Histories’ is the sort of thing everyone watches.”
― Ben Miller
“Ricky Gervais has jokes about people with disabilities, but do I think that’s a healthy thing? Yes, I really do, because he’s chosen his targets very carefully, and he’s thought about what he’s doing.”
― Ben Miller
“I’m afraid I’m very optimistic – and moralistic.”
― Ben Miller
“For me, one of the things art has to examine is how to live your life, and unless it’s doing that, it doesn’t work for me.”
― Ben Miller
“My success at living a moral life is pretty terrible, but I still aspire to do it! I identify with the Johnny Cash thing that trying to live a good life and be a good person are not necessarily the same thing!”
― Ben Miller
“I get frustrated with films that entertain me but ultimately dodge a moral question about how you should try and live.”
― Ben Miller
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