Michael McIntyre Quotes

I could never do stand-up because it's that thing of having to get up on stage. And out of every 10 jokes you tell, nine of them have to get a really good response.

I like the purity of stand-up because it is all about whether people laugh at your jokes. Either they laugh or they don't.

Stand-up is successful if they laugh. It's unsuccessful if they don't laugh.

I'm not a fan of stand-up comedy, personally. But some of them are incredibly skilled.

I thought all comedy was stupid. I went to watch a friend do stand-up and I thought absolutely everyone was terrible.

I have a lot of friends who were stand-ups, and they just stopped after a while, because they didn't like that battle, or they just couldn't do it. And then they would get on a sitcom and get visible and get back into it, because the audience was just way easier on them. But they lost those crucial years of learning to turn any audience into your audience.

Stand-up comedy is tough right now. Anybody can come to a concert, tape you, and put you up on the Internet. You either fight it or embrace it.

The Comedy Central CDs combined with the TV specials are what led to my stuff being traded and passed around, and a lot more people knowing my jokes than I thought.

You spend so much time in the world of virtual that the actual - which nothing is more actual than stand-up - it's a painful experience for the audience, and the comedian a lot of time - we miss that.

When I come out to do my stand-up set, I pretty much get bombarded with lines from movies. You try to play off it a little bit, but that's what people want to see.

I've been a comedian since I was fourteen. But I've never really been a CEO.

I just liked stand-up comedy so much. I used to memorize Bill Cosby albums and other people's albums, George Carlin, Flip Wilson.

When I was doing stand-up, I was about twenty, and I really think that that's a little too young. I didn't have a whole lot of life experience to draw on.

When you're a stand-up, you play in front of 600 people, and it's all about timing. I could never do stand-up comedy; it would be way too hard for me.

The problem with comedy audiences - it's like the Coliseum - when they see someone struggling, they don't feel altruistic towards them. They feel slightly repulsed by it.

As far as guys who perform onstage, I love Chris Rock. I'm kind of jaded on everyone else.

I'm thrilled at the moment because our audiences, you know, they... the demographic is 50% male.

One of my biggest problems with comedy was that I did not understand some of the jokes.

The comedian can put the punchline out there, but it's the audience that receives it - and has to get it.

People really have come for a dialogue when they go to a stand-up show in the U.K. They say, 'I understand that you have now finished your little comedy monologue; now I have something to say regarding what I've just heard.

Look, you know, you can't please everybody. I'm a stand-up comic. I know that. It doesn't matter how funny you are and how well you do, there's two people that are going to walk out of there hating you.

I think that people who do enjoy my stand-up comedy and the people who get it and the people who are taken in by it, they see that I'm a guy that has love of the game.

I don't know if you know you're funny, but you enjoy being funny. I know I'm funny because people tell me I am, but when I watch myself, it doesn't make me laugh. Does that make sense? Because I know the jokes, and to me, I feel like I'm pulling the wool over people's eyes. And there are probably people who do not enjoy what I do.

When I do stand-up shows at colleges, girls will talk to me after the show, and that always feels good. I like talking to them.

Before YouTube, I used to show videos at film festivals, and that was good and constructive. Watching things with an audience is a great way to gauge - it's pretty clear what's working in comedy when there's a joke and people laugh or don't laugh.