"As I walked through the markets of Hong Kong, staring at jade jewellery & Angry Birds paraphonalia, it occured to me that I could order everything on eBay or Amazon. The foreign land’s treasures have been globalised to a point of total consumer disinterest. The only thing that was left to consume was food & architecture…

Could it be that When you are drowning in a digital culture that says that social is everything then you might forget what makes you special? When Amazon and every ad banner online knows what you like, what happens if you forget what you like. Anti-consumption…

When you can be anywhere, you have to celebrate where you are right then and there. That’s luxury.

True affirmation of identity and uniqueness has become tricky when you are constantly forced into relationships with “friends”, Groupon deals and “other people also bought this” prompts. Perhaps travel and food, as sensorial experiences that one cannot share, will become even more prized than they are now."

"Inspired partly by Herr Siebert’s printed name cards, and partly by the availability of the moveable type in this Ibadan shanty town community – decided to make some old-school name cards. In the age of real-time/near-time search, persistent data and (for this writer) a unique enough name – what is the minimal level of information that needs to go on a name card?"

"whole address is so good, but I keep coming back to… [part] about how failure to perfectly copy our heroes leads to finding our own voice…

"Way back in the 1940s there was a very, very funny man named Jack Benny. He was a giant star, easily one of the greatest comedians of his generation. And a much younger man named Johnny Carson wanted very much to be Jack Benny. In some ways he was, but in many ways he wasn’t. He emulated Jack Benny, but his own quirks and mannerisms, along with a changing medium, pulled him in a different direction. And yet his failure to completely become his hero made him the funniest person of his generation. David Letterman wanted to be Johnny Carson, and was not, and as a result my generation of comedians wanted to be David Letterman. And none of us are. My peers and I have all missed that mark in a thousand different ways. But the point is this : It is our failure to become our perceived ideal that ultimately defines us and makes us unique.""

"…few years ago, I received an unsolicited e-mail asking me if I was interested in “submitting content”…Eventually it transpired that content-seeker wanted to know if I had any jokes that could be sold to be viewed on mobile phones…my material is written to be performed as part of a whole in particular sorts of places, & I have given a great deal of thought to how the acceptability and impact of ideas is affected by pacing, context and their position as part of a whole…didn’t want it being chopped up, miniaturised, de-contextualised…
"Next month I am curating a weekend of comedy and music at the Southbank Centre, London. I am a curator. What a dead word. It sounds like someone stirring turds in a toilet bowl with a stick. If something is being curated it already seems fixed and decayed – bands recreating their classic albums in their entirety, seasons of film screenings working towards a pre-ordained conclusion. To that end, I’ve tried to schedule events that are unrepeatable."