"I loved listening to comedy albums when I was growing up. This one was produced by George Martin. Sellers used to put on all these accents and do them perfectly. On 'Suddenly It's Folk Song' it's him playing a German anthropologist. [Proceeds to recount entire section of the album verbatim, accents and all] It's just a great record. I loved all those black and white caper movies. The talent on Sellers was just amazing. He was so influential on the Bonzos and the Python people. I picked up on this as a teenager and I know every word of it now. It's perfect. It's extraordinary how funny he is."

"One of my all-time favorite novels is Crime And Punishment. I read it in high school, and for some terrifying reason, I really identified with Raskolnikov. It's so funny, because he sort of behaves amorally, but he has an incredible sense of right and wrong. Obviously, I couldn't identify with him as a killer, but I could understand what it means to know that something's wrong but do it anyway. I was 17 when I read it, and the feeling of having betrayed one's sense of right and wrong — and then living with the consequences — was something that I could completely identify with."

"This was made before George died and released shortly after, so you can’t watch it without a lump in your throat. He’s such a brilliant musician, an effortless singer, but also just an ordinary, interesting guy with a natural gift. I used to have this unhealthy habit of playing his songs when I was drunk and maudlin. I love how this film shows how he took control of his image early on, and how we see the lyrics to Freedom as being so astute, not vacuous at all. He’s also funny and filthy – the kind of person you’d love to have a drink with. It’s so sad that he’s not here."

"Huge, magical, realist epic about Indian Independence through the eyes of a child born on the stroke of midnight. Funny, dense, flowery, the story goes on huge tangents, but I love this crazy novel, which somehow manages to depict and sum up the essence of the incredible vast country of India. A real education for me as someone who grew up in London, who had never been to India while growing up. This book helped me better understand what my parents had been through, where they came from before they chose to travel across the world to settle in the the U.K., where I was born."

"I gotta get a really good comedy in there, and I don’t know if there’s ever been a better comedy — for my funny bones — than Animal House. All the laughs they crammed into that movie — I don’t know that it’s been beat. All the different characters; the way you basically, again, you like the anti-heroes — you like the guys who were in college and they were the slackers and all that. Just so many laughs in that movie. For me, if I’m flipping through the channels and I see Animal House on, I could sit down and watch that movie at any time, any day."

"Insane and amazing corporate nightmares. My dad took me to see this when I was only ten, which was maybe not the best parenting decision. I was already devouring all manner of movies by then, but I don’t think I’d seen anything that was so funny and so shocking at the same time. It’s a popular film, but it still strikes me as weirdly underrated and misunderstood. Oddly, the regular R-rated version is way more hard-hitting than this uncut one. It turns out the ultraviolent stuff they had to cut out of the movie was so over the top, it sort of made it goofy."

"Then I’m gonna go with the Holy Grail. I think these movies always get pushed aside as being silly and yes, they are silly, which is one of the intents of the movies. It was just, as a child, and as I grew up and watched them as an adult, they were one of the reasons why I was like, “Oh, you don’t have to think the way that everybody thinks” — these guys just did whatever they wanted to do, and their imaginations ran wild. They were always a huge inspiration, and so that movie was such a great capsule of that. And so funny. So good."

"And then for something light and fluffy I would have to say Trading Places (laughing). Hilarious. Light, and fun, and hilarious, and a lot of laughs. I had to throw one comedy in there. I remember the first time I saw it — I don’t remember exactly where I was; I was young — I think the first time I saw Trading Places I was 15 years old, 16 years old, something like that. Eddie Murphy was just in his comedic prime; I think he came off Saturday Night Live not long before that. It’s absolutely a great premise and really funny, really enjoyable. I just loved it."