Robert Webb

Feminism isn't about hating men. It's about challenging the absurd gender distinctions that boys and girls learn from childhood and carry into their adult lives.

I'm a huge, huge fan of Chris Morris. I think he's a genius, and it is not a word I use very often. I think he's fantastic.

The strength of 'Peep Show' has always been that that it's quite traditional, but it's obviously presented in a very new way.

I'm troubled by how much I like Rowan Williams. I think it reveals character flaws in myself that I'd rather not think about. The softly spoken soon-to-be-former Archbishop of Canterbury is my secret crush, my weird pash, and my guilty pleasure.

Do I wake up every day and thank God that I live in 21st-century Britain? Of course not. But from time to time, I recognise it as an unfathomable privilege.

When I was 15, if Stephen Fry had advised me to trim my eyebrows with a Flymo, I would have given it serious consideration.

Ed Miliband is obviously a mild guy. I don't expect him to pretend to be a pugilist.

On 'EastEnders,' if someone gets surprising news on the phone, the scene ends with them looking at their handset in amazement. No one in real life does that.

Ukippers are the kinds of fools who haven't noticed they're sleep-walking towards fascism. Many UKIP candidates are of the age when their parents fought in the Second World War.

Missing out an apostrophe or two does not make you an idiot. But equating party allegiance with nationhood certainly makes you a thug. And thugs don't often notice that they're thugs, usually because they're also idiots.

I've been called funny. I assume my wife thinks I'm funny. But generally, if you bumped into me and said hello, I would say hello back, politely. And that would be it.

No, feminism isn't 'over.' We need it not only to challenge injustice but because the whole gender expectations thing is bad for men, too.

I am a feminist. I don't especially care for the term, but there it is.

We are people, individuals comprising a variety of sexes, races, shifting sexualities and all the rest of it. Every convention that tries to reinforce this difference is a step back. Notions of gender pointlessly separate men from women, but also mothers from daughters and fathers from sons.

My mother died when I was 17, and I moved in with my dad to make a 12-month pig's ear of retaking my A-levels.

Slow, skinny, and an utter countryside coward: I lived in dread of nettles, spiders, and the very sound of a wasp. As a victim, I was beneath the dignity of the bullies in my year but fair game to the ones in the year below.

My childhood was as heavily gendered as any you would find in a working-class household in Lincolnshire.

Where you have 20 people who all share roughly the same educational and life experiences, they're going to come up with the same solutions to the same problems.

Very bad things follow when we kid ourselves that we're naturally rational, rather than the more humbling truth: naturally emotional.

We think; therefore, we often talk rubbish.

I had a friend at college who took being poor very personally. He started showering in the sports centre next door and said he wasn't going to pay for the hot water in our flat any more because he didn't use it. He made me and my other friend pay the bills on our own.

A waiter at the hotel kept telling me that Cape Town is just like a European city, but it's not like that at all. It doesn't feel safe, and I didn't really go out at night.

I'm good at finding things to do on my own, even if it's just reading.

When I was 18, I was halfway up the Eiffel Tower with my friend, Tom, when we decided to stick our heads through the railings. The gap between the railings was exactly the right size to be able to put your head through and nearly get stuck. Which is exactly what happened.

We have a family holiday once a year, usually abroad, but that's it. I feel I should have holidays for my family's sake, but I'm not that adventurous.

I'm the guy who spends 15 minutes staring out of the window wondering what to have for lunch.

I think of myself as naturally idle. The trouble is, the 'nothing' that I do every day is not really nothing. I potter. I muck about with emails, I make coffee, I fiddle with my computer to make sure that the book I haven't started writing is perfectly synced across all platforms and devices.

Mum was an amazing parent and my best pal. The tragedy of it, really, was that she died from breast cancer just as I was becoming a man, aged 17, and we were just starting to speak as adults. She was snatched away, and it felt cruel. She made me laugh.

My parents' marriage was already shaky when I came along. They split up when I was five, and I didn't see Dad all that often after that - four or five times a year.

I was the youngest of three brothers by five years, so I spent most of my childhood playing alone, being Zorro or some other superhero, doing Lego, watching telly and riding my bike.

I don't care where you went to school. There - have I made your day? No? All right, I'll go further: I also don't care what your dad did for a living or how your mum voted. Nor do I mind whether you ate your tea in front of the telly, dinner at the kitchen table, or supper in the dining room.

I was an usher at the Lyric Theatre Hammersmith. You had to watch whatever play they had on 40 times.

I get recognised a fair bit. It goes up when 'Peep Show' or the sketch show is on the telly or when we're doing loads of interviews.

I did 'The Frank Skinner Show,' and they gave me a little jukebox-shaped CD player, which looks nice in the kitchen.

Like most men, I can't say I am thrilled my hair's falling out, but then, if I really cared, I suppose I would wear a wig, get transplants, or start taking special pills, so I am obviously just putting up with it.

I don't do much to keep in trim - I try to walk places instead of driving whenever I can, but I really ought to do more.

When I look in the mirror, I see the ageing process at full pelt, the hairline in retreat, the bags under the eyes growing and darkening, that kind of thing. I suppose it would be easier if I weren't an actor, but I am fairly philosophical about it.

One thing about the fantasy dinner party idea that no one considers is whether these people are going to get on. I would say John McEnroe and Ian McEwan, but what would they have to say to each other?

I spend far too much on taxis. Now, if anyone suggests we get the Tube I say, 'The Tube! I'd forgotten about that.'

I hate it when people use the word 'sorry' aggressively, as in, 'Sorry, but I hate you.' Sorry's an important word, and it shouldn't be abused.

I grew up in Lincolnshire, trying to get the daughters of farmers and policemen to like me. It didn't go well until I got to college where, suddenly, there were different sorts of humans.

If I hadn't got into comedy, I wouldn't have met Abbey, my wife, and I wouldn't have my two girls, and the whole thing unravels. That's the thing about being basically - whisper it quietly - happy, is that you don't really want to change anything, because once you start changing stuff, then what you've got all disappears.

I don't do much lying in real life because I don't get away with it.

I can't imagine getting bored with comedy or thinking comedy is beneath us suddenly.

He likes 'Confetti,' and he doesn't like 'Star Wars.' I think that just relieves us from the burden of ever having to take Mark Kermode seriously again.

I'm feeling around for what happens in a post-'Peep Show' world.

The way people imagine their political leaders is, like it or not, an important factor in how they decide to vote and, indeed, whether they vote at all.

Religion is many things, but one of them, surely, is a way for adults to indulge in uncritical hero worship.

I'd kill to be 'Doctor Who.' Maybe they could make the Doctor two people? He has got two hearts, after all.

Ambiguity around ambiguity is forgivable in an unpublished poet and expected of an arts student on the pull: for a professional comedian demoting himself to the role of 'thinker', with stadiums full of young people hanging on his every word, it won't really do.