Jeremy Lloyd Quotes

Writing your own jokes, you just kind of keep working on something until you think it might work, and then you try it out and hope for the best.

I don't really write jokes down. I tend to have a premise that I work out and test on stage.

Writing humor for me is more like a watchful-ness. You have to watch. When you say something funny, or someone else does, it's more like you wait for the piece.

Comedy is just to me, maybe it's a natural knack, if I can see where the joke is in the writing and I can see where the setup is and I can tell this is the way to make it.

I'll think of the idea and then I'll write something down, then within that there will be a joke or two which is the original thing which I thought was funny.

One always writes comedy at the moment of deepest hysteria.

Coming up with comedy is hard, man. Those bits aren't easy to think of!

I've had jokes stolen a thousand times. But if you can do it better than me, you can have it. I've had jokes stolen from me in the club when I'm next on stage. And my brain will start to turn, and the gears will start turning, and I'll go onstage and create a whole new bit.

When you're coming up with new material, it's not always gonna be good. The only way to learn is for it not to get a laugh, so you can adjust it and come back the next day to see if it's working right. Next time, you might get a different laugh. You're constantly rebuilding.

You can write jokes at any point of the day. Jokes are not that hard to write, or they shouldn't be when it is literally your job.

So many times I've done a CD, and then the week after I record it, I've got this new tagline that's killer. And it makes the whole bit better. It happens all the time. But that's just the process of comedy.

When you have a writing partner and you're writing a comedy, your goal is to make each other laugh.

Comedy writing is taking the brief thought and going with it.

I love stand-up, but the process of writing is a little more lonely. I want to keep doing both, though.

People don't understand how much time and work it takes to make somebody laugh, and how hard it is to write a script, to put together the story, the characters. When everyone laughs simultaneously, there's no greater feeling.

It's always interesting for me to watch the pilot of an established show because you see how the writers and actors weren't really sure what the show was and what the dynamics were. If you look at the pilot for 'Seinfeld,' for example, it's practically unrecognizable.

Generating comic material can sometimes get the better of you.

I start with the joke line and write backward.

The first thing you start with when you're trying to write something funny is it has to - it really has to come to you first. I has to be an idea that you have that first makes you laugh, that strikes you as funny.

We sat down and talked about who we liked comedy-wise, TV-wise, what made us laugh and what we enjoyed doing. So a lot of our tastes went into 'The Ant and Dec Show.'

What I love is getting a new joke, or a premise like a sketch idea or a movie idea. That's the best feeling for a comedian.

It's way more fun to tell jokes for an hour than it is to sit in a room and bash your head against the wall trying to think of sketches.

I always think about my jokes as like I'm driving down a street, trying to go into all the culs-de-sacs along the way. I'm just taking a thoughtful, weird journey.

What people who don't write don't understand is that they think you make up the line consciously — but you don't. It proceeds from your unconscious. So it's the same surprise to you when it emerges as it is to the audience when the comic says it. I don't think of the joke and then say it. I say it and then realize what I've said. And I laugh at it, because I'm hearing it for the first time myself.

Usually the beginning of a story that people hear a lot. For example, "My girlfriend is upset about her new haircut" or "My dad keeps losing his car keys." And then I just think of different ways the story could end. "My girlfriend is upset about her new haircut. I don't understand why she's crying. I'm the one who has to get a new girlfriend." Then I try it out on stage. I don't do a lot of re-writing. My jokes either work or they don't. The trick is just to write a ton of jokes.