Kayvan Novak Quotes

I have been ‘absorbing’ people – their voices, their mannerisms – all my life, to the point where I am a sort of Frankenstein of different people. My own speaking voice is, in fact, a mixture of how my two best mates speak, because they are cool, and I am not.

My signature dish is a khoresht fesenjan. It’s a stew with pomegranate and walnuts.

I miss watching TV and thinking they were all real. I used to feel like that about ‘Neighbours.’

My characters are much more famous than I am, so I don’t crave attention; I just crave working and doing good work. Having a feeling of self-worth.

My first love is doing my own comedy stuff.

I want to be James Bond! I don’t want to be Doctor Who.

My pranks have never been about getting a negative reaction. They’ve always been a tolerance test for the person I’m engaging with.

I tick that cliched box of being the class clown. I’ve always done impressions and characters, so I’m very lucky that I get to do that as a career now.

I’ve never sat down and written jokes. I wouldn’t know how to.

When I do an impression of someone or when I am pretending to be someone else, something freaky happens: I feel the person I am mimicking behind my eyeballs. Their head is sitting perfectly inside mine, helping me project a false self out on to the world. And it’s not always a choice.

I’m good at winding up British people, but Americans are slightly different. A lot of them are more stoical. They’re harder to get a reaction out of more of the time.

I met the Gallagher brothers, and Noel was quoting my ‘Fonejacker’ catchphrases. Hearing your heroes quote you is incredible.

I was born in London! I’m as Western as you get.

When I was 18 years old, I had a Saturday job working in a clothing store on London’s Bond Street. I would fold T-shirts for ten hours at a time and get paid £19 for the privilege.

From ‘Fonejacker,’ multiculturalism has been a big part of my repertoire.

When a son tells a dad to trust him, it goes against every instinct in his body to do so.

Character building is one of my favourite things to do.

I can’t really walk down the street as Brian Badonde without someone going, ‘Bwark.’

Being funny was something I was doing before I understood what that even was. Now I’m making a career out of it.

I think I’ve exhausted all my options in the U.K., unless I become a game show host.

‘MasterChef‘ is pretty good.

I had to fool the world into accepting me. I didn’t seem to fit the mould of my idols.

Just acting on someone else’s set feels like a holiday, almost.

My nickname at school was Caveman. When I tell people my name is Kayvan, some insist on going ‘Caveman?’

Doing a series of ‘Facejacker’ takes about nine months. It’s pretty intense.

I was born in London. In a lot of ways I’m English, but I have this Iranianness, this culture instilled by my parents, by my family.

Getting expelled from secondary school and going to a more arty-farty college gave me the incentive to perform and opened some doors.

I enjoyed school until the age of 13 – I loved my teachers, my friends. Then, suddenly, you get thrown into a boys’ school, and the ecosystem changed, and I wasn’t sure where I fitted in. I was still always the clown, but I wasn’t inspired, I guess.

Zayn is a cool name.

There’s a really geeky YouTube channel which I love. It’s a guy called Oliver Harper. He makes documentaries about films. He’s a real movie buff – there’s loads of trivia and detail.