“Love at first sight is probably for stupid people, but maybe I’m just cynical.”
― Greg Davies
“Every time I travel, I’m in a rage until I reach my destination. I find myself shouting at suitcases, as if it’s their fault that I’m an inefficient packer. I’ve also learnt that whenever you despair of humanity and start thinking that you hate people – as I frequently do – you only have to travel to realise that people are basically all right.”
― Greg Davies
“I grew up in Shropshire, but I was born in Wales. There was a hospital seven miles away, but my dad drove 45 miles over the Welsh border so I could play rugby for Wales. But as a skinny asthmatic, I was only ever good at swimming.”
― Greg Davies
“One day I woke up, had an early mid-life crisis, and decided it all had to change. I went and did Logan Murray’s comedy course for 11 weeks and then started sneakily doing open-spot gigs, and that was it.”
― Greg Davies
“Some of my friends in this business have received awful online abuse, but I’ve so far pretty much avoided it – and I’ve largely avoided meeting hideous people in the street. Most people tend to be charming.”
― Greg Davies
“Don’t say I was an inspirational teacher – my former pupils would laugh their heads off. I was grossly incompetent, but I hope I didn’t do the children a disservice.”
― Greg Davies
“I have no system of writing. It’s chaos. I could be upside down on my bedroom floor; I’ll be scribbling on a pad that I’ll then lose. I’ll be on the toilet with my laptop on, sitting in the pub with my iPad.”
― Greg Davies
“I have no desire to work my adrenal glands any harder than necessary. I like lazing around; it’s pretty important to my well-being. But I also get bored, so that’s when my culture-vulturing kicks in.”
― Greg Davies
“I would spend a lot of time setting up an accident scene where it appeared that I had seriously hurt myself – hedge-cutter, ketchup, that sort of thing. When my sister happened upon the scene of horror, I would lift my head and pathetically plead for her to ‘get Mum’.”
― Greg Davies
“Humour is learned behaviour, and I know exactly why I learned to be funny. I did it from a very early age. My dad was a hilarious man, and the way we interacted was being silly together. It was a way to hold his attention.”
― Greg Davies
“Every time I wrote a school scene, I thought of that drama studio, because that’s where I was a bit lost at sea.”
― Greg Davies
“When you’re trying to enter something as intimidating as comedy, starting out with a support network of likeminded people is a powerful thing. It was natural we’d end up working together because we went through those first petrifying moments together. We created gigs for each other, slapped each other on the back, and protected each other.”
― Greg Davies
“If you’re funny and working in education, I think the perception is that you’re either inspirational or awful. So which was I? I suppose that depends on who you talk to.”
― Greg Davies
“My favourite place in Britain is… my home county of Shropshire. I think it’s one of the most beautiful places in the world.”
― Greg Davies
“In my 20s and early 30s, I was very much a man lost at sea, with very little direction in life, and painfully immature.”
― Greg Davies
“Some friends think I’m dull now. But I think it’s great that I’m no longer trying to make everyone laugh in the pub.”
― Greg Davies
“When I was 17, my dad was teaching in the States. He hired an A-Team-style van, and we drove all over. My resounding memory of it was that we saw all these wonderful places but that my sister and I were being horrible, sulky teenagers.”
― Greg Davies
“I’m 6ft 8in, so I feel like I’ve got full body thrombosis about five hours in if I’m flying in economy.”
― Greg Davies
“I don’t watch an awful lot of television. It’s a very strange thing, and I don’t know a lot of people who work in telly who watch a lot of it.”
― Greg Davies
“I would say the more significant factor of my starting late is that I developed a sufficiently thick skin to be able to – just about – handle the knocks that a fledgling comedian takes.”
― Greg Davies
“It’s a strange old thing, but I think an awful lot of ‘Inbetweeners’ fans still don’t realise I’m a stand-up.”
― Greg Davies
“I love what I’m doing and will continue to do it, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”
― Greg Davies
“I’ve politely declined a few reality-type things but generally have been asked to do things that I’d enjoy. I’ll be doing less in the new year so I can get some writing done.”
― Greg Davies
“I came into comedy to make people laugh. If the fact that I can’t stop eating Hobnobs in any way helps, I’m happy to celebrate that.”
― Greg Davies
“’Man Down”s my absolute priority. If they give me another series, I’ll throw everything into it because I really like the characters. But after that, I’ll certainly be getting back on stage because I haven’t done a proper gig for two years. Which is ridiculous for someone who loves it so much.”
― Greg Davies
“As soon as I get the chance, I’ll be back spouting nonsense on the microphone.”
― Greg Davies
“Myself and some kids on our estate became obsessed with the creation of the ultimate go-kart. This ambition culminated in the creation of a six-man super-cart, which was essentially a plank of wood with four wheels, and a failed attempt to jump a tributary of the River Severn powered only by Rex, our dog.”
― Greg Davies
“I once bought some enormous fireworks that were literally the size of sticks of dynamite. We would go into the field behind our house, slide them into the biggest cow pats we could find, and blow them sky high. It was exhilarating and, for the cows, incredibly confusing.”
― Greg Davies
“It’s an irony that with the physical decline of age comes more mental wellbeing. It’s life’s cruel trick. You’ve settled down as a person, you feel happier with who you are, and then you get a massive swollen prostate and have to go for a test every two weeks. It’s life’s way of saying the struggle isn’t over.”
― Greg Davies
“The state of the world petrifies me as much as it does everyone else at the moment. Anyone who comes to my show expecting incisive political analysis will be deeply disappointed.”
― Greg Davies
“The only difference between a comedian and someone else? We need to make people laugh more.”
― Greg Davies
“One of my friend calls me ‘lost to showbiz’, but that’s only because I don’t go for a drink as often as he’d like, because I’m always working. I’ve met very few famous people who are lost to showbiz – I have met some, mind.”
― Greg Davies
“Comedy brings out this rage in people: they get furious when they don’t like something. I have some lovely hardcore fans.”
― Greg Davies
“Me and my sister made up a game called ‘Milky Cow’. We were on holiday in France when I was 12, and there was a kid who had bovine features, and every time we went past her, we’d say, ‘There’s Milky Cow’.”
― Greg Davies
“I often run teaching down in my standup, but I had some great years, and it’s a great job. It represented a place where I knew what I wanted to do but didn’t have the courage.”
― Greg Davies
“I was a very young 21-year-old. I was very scared. I spent three years at university in west London, and I went into central London three times. I came from Shropshire, and just having travelled that far was enough ambition.”
― Greg Davies
“I’m really not comfortable talking about my personal life.”
― Greg Davies
“My dad always told me that, as far as he’s concerned, I can do whatever I choose in life as long as I’m happy and can handle the consequences of bad decisions. He only ever said that when he thought I was doing the wrong thing. I would employ similar passive aggression.”
― Greg Davies
“As far as characters are concerned, Alan Partridge makes me wet myself. I’m currently reading the book and have started talking like him as an unfortunate consequence.”
― Greg Davies
“I try and make myself or consenting people I am very close to the victims of my comedy. I don’t enjoy bullying masquerading as comedy.”
― Greg Davies
“There is nothing bad about this job. Comedians have nothing to complain about. That doesn’t mean I’m not constantly moaning and worrying.”
― Greg Davies
“It often occurs to me that this is a strange way to make a living. But it’s wonderful, too. There are many ways to read maturity, and I’m not fighting the instinct to simply enjoy that kind of nonsense. I love that someone would pay me to draw on somebody else’s bottom.”
― Greg Davies
“Anything my dad says about what I say about him, I can remind him of ten examples where he publicly humiliated me. We’re really close. The culture of mickey-taking is well established in my family.”
― Greg Davies
“I was scarred in 1977 by watching Jaws, and I’ve never got over it.”
― Greg Davies
“I don’t know why comedians moan about touring; you get driven to a town, stay in a hotel, work for an hour and a half with nice people, and eat fatty service station food. There’s nothing not to like.”
― Greg Davies
“As a young ma,n I was an absolute idiot. I think my exes would say I was a likeable baby. I had a teenager’s bedroom when I was 32.”
― Greg Davies
“My dad, who had spent his life as a lecturer, said, ‘That’s all very well, but you need to earn a living, so why don’t you teach?’ I did, and 13 years later, I woke up.”
― Greg Davies
“Kids are great. They are endlessly fascinating and bizarre. But I also think that if I had left them on their own for long enough, one of them would have been eaten.”
― Greg Davies
“I had a great time as a teacher, but I was just treading water, as a lot of us do.”
― Greg Davies
“’Man Down’ is not a serious study of the human condition: it is a balls-out attempt at making people laugh. So nobody in the show can afford to cling on to any vanity, because we’re always going to push the humiliation levels.”
― Greg Davies
“I’ve never disguised the fact that I wasn’t happy in teaching. But the reason was that I wanted to do comedy. I would have been a very unhappy security guard or a very unhappy greengrocer.”
― Greg Davies
“I wasn’t a happy teacher, but I also wasn’t an absolute psychopath like the teachers I portray on screen.”
― Greg Davies
“It’s a strange thing when someone passes away. It’s always when you’re not expecting it that you’re affected by it. When we first started filming, we were filming with existing characters in a location that we’d never been before.”
― Greg Davies
“When I’ve mentioned my screen wife is Helen Baxendale, so many people have burst out laughing. My self-esteem has been crushed by it.”
― Greg Davies
“I am not a father, and the only children that I get close to are my nieces.”
― Greg Davies
“Being a teacher was great, but it wasn’t what I wanted to do, so it was ultimately crushing.”
― Greg Davies
“If you want something badly enough, you go for it.”
― Greg Davies
“I can’t remember the last time I can say I felt truly unwound.”
― Greg Davies
“I have a terrible work ethic. The best way for me to do anything in life is for someone to say, ‘You need to do this by this time, or you’re in trouble’.”
― Greg Davies
“My dad is the funniest human being I’ve ever met in my life – for years, I’d watch him hold court in whatever situation he was in; he was the most amazing raconteur. I often feel I’ve hijacked what should have been his career.”
― Greg Davies
“I think the main thing I’d bring to Chewbacca is middle-aged spread. Chewbacca has looked after himself.”
― Greg Davies
“As anyone who’s done any acting will tell you, if you haven’t got a malicious evil streak, it’s such a joy to let one out.”
― Greg Davies
“The truth is, I should have never done teaching. I did teaching because I didn’t have the bottle to have a go at comedy. Whether there’s any gain to comedy is not for me to say. But certainly it was no loss to teaching.”
― Greg Davies
“I am most certainly not rich. But I am a man who is intrinsically lazy. And I’m more than happy to put a piece of cheese on a rice cake and call that dinner.”
― Greg Davies
“People often tell me that they have no idea how I can do standup. The idea of trying to make a large group of strangers laugh is, for many, absolutely petrifying – and it is – but there are ways of gradually developing the material that can ease the fear.”
― Greg Davies
“I tend to develop my rambling anecdotes by actually getting up and performing them. That’s the joy/horror of stand up – if you have the germ of an idea that you think might be funny, there is a way of finding out if it’s funny very quickly.”
― Greg Davies
“In standup, the feedback is instantaneous, and if it fails, you know you’ll be off-stage and hiding in a short time.”
― Greg Davies
“Carla Lane’s ‘Butterflies’ seemed to be on in our house at all times when I was a kid, as did ‘The Good Life.’ But it was ‘Fawlty Towers that made me really sit up for the first time. Basil’s incandescent rage made me howl.”
― Greg Davies
“I frequently meet ex-pupils who seem to think I didn’t totally ruin their educations, so that’s something.”
― Greg Davies
“’Taskmaster’ taps into a universal humour of people making a fool of themselves.”
― Greg Davies
“I got to the stage where I physically couldn’t carry on unless I gave comedy a go: it was necessity.”
― Greg Davies
“I am often driven by necessity, rather than actually doing things like an adult.”
― Greg Davies
“Our family were very quick to laugh at each other.”
― Greg Davies
“If you’re doing a job, and you secretly want to do a different job, you start to blame the job. I was blaming the teaching for that fact I wasn’t performing. I really felt I needed to follow a comedy career.”
― Greg Davies
“I was a drama teacher, so I had the opportunity to show off in front of a captive audience. I essentially did 13 years of stand-up. Whether my pupils would agree that I was remotely interesting or not is another question.”
― Greg Davies
“I rather like finding out instantly whether you’ve been successful or not. It’s a cliche, really, but the fact is that every gig is different: it’s a live event, and you’re with a different group of individuals every night.”
― Greg Davies
“I swam for the county when I was 12. You wouldn’t think it to look at me now, but I’m as graceful as a seal.”
― Greg Davies
“The most expensive thing I’ve ever splashed out on is… a tailor-made suit. It cost ã1,400, and it’s the best money I ever spent. It’s a miracle thing – I put it on, and I don’t look overweight.”
― Greg Davies
“My greatest weakness is… food. If it looks like it’s going to taste nice, it goes in my face – simple as that.”
― Greg Davies
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