It took me a long time to get established. I’ve had a radio show for about 12 years, and I’ve been on telly, but I’ve come to the fore more recently with Mock the Week and Michael McIntyre’s Roadshow, and other bits and pieces.

I started doing impersonations of teachers at school, and that got me more notice than any work I was going to do. So, though I didn’t realise what I was heading towards, I went down the route of drama, and it coincided with the blossoming of the comedy scene.

It was a mixture of wanting to do it, and not having any alternatives. Most comedians would tell you today that they’re afraid they might get found out, that someone will say: “No, sorry, you’re not good enough — you’ll have to get a proper job.” You only feel as good as the last show you did. There is that insecurity.

One-liners originated for me because I was originally so terrified that I needed to get to the joke as quickly as possible. Also, I have a short attention span myself, and I’m not a natural storyteller. Everything boils down to short forms these days — tweets, advert breaks, slogans, soundbites.

If you’ve been speaking for 20 minutes in short bursts, you can see blood coming out of people’s ears, because it’s too much information. You need to find ways of varying the angle of attack, whether by music, or character. It’s too much of a Christmas pudding. It needs to have some salad in between.

Short, sharp jokes are good for television, because you can get in and out very quickly. It’s harder when you’re putting together a longer show.

I’ve got better at learning the jokes over the years, and learn them in blocks. It takes me a week or two to learn a show, but once it’s up and running, it’s in my head.

The hard part is then when someone heckles, or something happens that’s not in the script, but I’ve got used to that over the years. The worst thing you can do is look as if you want to get back to the script. You have to look comfortable what­ever happens.

Someone described stand-up as like learning a musical instrument, except that you have to do all your practising in front of an audience.

Having a thick skin is all part of the job. I think I’ve got used to healing quickly — let’s put it that way. I do have to be sensitive to read a room, but mentally ruthless to block out when things don’t go so well, or a negative comment. There’s an ele­ment of risk about whether some­thing’s very funny or unfunny. You can turn an audience on or off very quickly. That’s both the excitement and the danger of the job. You have to concentrate on the excitement rather than be afraid of the danger.

People do send me stuff, but I don’t read it. I don’t want them to think I’ve stolen it, and till very recently I was writing all my own stuff. I’ve just got someone in to help me because, when you’re on telly a lot, it’s goodbye to that material. But it’s hard to get someone to write good stuff, not samey stuff, or a parody of what I write.

If you’re in a band, people will want to hear the old songs, but if you’re a comedian, people don’t want to hear the old jokes.

Inspiration comes from all over the place. I’m constantly looking at life, at ideas and words, images and symbols, trying to turn them upside down, and asking: “What’s the worst that can happen there?” And if I can boil that down into the fewest words, hopefully I’ll have some one-liners.

I was quite a shy child that thought about things but didn’t really say very much. My dad’s a physicist, and I was brought up without any per­form­ing background. But you know what they say about performing be­ing the revenge of the shy on the world? I felt things, but never had a way of expressing them till I took on another personality.

I’m a comedian who is a Christian, not a Christian comedian. You wouldn’t know it from my act, especially — or at least maybe by what I don’t do rather than what I do. In the same way that a Christian baker might make hot cross buns once a year, the little book I’ve written for DLT is my hot cross buns, as it were. I don’t speak with any authority, but as a Christian who’s trying to make his own way. They’re my thoughts, for what they’re worth.

I am more influenced by people in sit-coms, like Leonard Rossiter or Ronnie Barker, or Rowan Atkinson in Blackadder. That’s what I wanted to do, really. And there were lots of in­flu­ential people in my family, and friends, and people in the same situation — trying to work out a faith that translates to Monday morning from the weekend.

I came from quite an Evangelical background, and things seemed very black-and-white on Sundays; but when Monday came round, things all got a bit greyer. You want a faith that’s not woolly, but at the same time there are lots of questions that are not so easily answered. People wear those wristbands “What Would Jesus Do?” That question is so impossible that it annoys me. Maybe he’d do several different things? Or maybe he’d surprise everyone? You have to try and do your best.

I’ve got quite a few missionaries and preachers on both sides of my family. My father’s a lay preacher and goes to a Baptist church with my mum. That kind of thing is not alien to me. I have a younger brother who lives in the south of France.

I have a wife and three teenage children. We live in Twickenham and go to a Low Anglican church there.

It’s hard to pinpoint a particular point of decision: it’s been more like onion-layers over the years, especially because when you grow up in the Church, it’s quite hard to know what’s your own decision and what you feel you ought to do. I remember when I was about 12, I heard a preacher give a gospel message and thought: “Yeah, I believe that, but I’m not going to show it.”

Later, it was always a conflict in my head between boring church ser­vices and the feeling that God was the source of all creativity. The two didn’t quite match, and I was deter­mined to find the intersection in the Venn diagram somehow. I’m not sure I have found it.

My kids find church boring some­times, and I tend to think: “Yep, I don’t disagree: that is how it is a lot of the time, I’m afraid.”

What you come away with is the warmth and love of the people, if it’s any good, and I think it’s probably going to be the same till we get to heaven.

I tend to prefer Job — I don’t know if I’m attracted to the melancholic things. The Bible is such a varied book; I prefer the realistic stuff.

I’m going through John’s Gospel at the moment. I quite like reading different versions, because when you’ve been brought up in a thing, it is very difficult to get away from the preconceptions. I try and stay clear of things like Lamentations or Revela­tion, but I think everyone does that.

My children thought I didn’t have a job at all at first, because I was still up when they went to bed, and was there in the morning, having worked at night. Now it’s a bit cooler, though they’d never admit it, of course. But I still get told what to wear when I pick my daughter up.

The best bit was my son making fun of me for not being on Mock the Week: “I thought you were funny, Dad. . .” And then two weeks later, guess who was on Mock the Week? I win.

We went to California this year, just driving down the coast. It feels like being in a TV programme, because that’s where you’ve seen it all before. Locally, there’s Kew Gardens and lots of leafy places to walk. We’re stuck in west London now because the kids have friends here, but that’s good.

It’s quite a static, adrenalin-filled job, holding a microphone and fighting an audience or sitting in the car. So, when I can, I like to get out for a run or play football, just to get that pent-up energy out.

I always pray for my audience beforehand, that somehow their spirits will be lifted — I’m not there to heal them, but [I pray] that what happens will be somehow positive and take them higher. As a dad, I’m always praying for my kids, that they will find their right way and poten­tial, even if it’s not something that I feel comfortable with.

I also pray that I don’t get sucked down by the weight of being semi-rich in world terms. It’s easy to say and difficult to do, but I think it’s a bit of a grey soup that we live in, in the West, and it’s quite hard to be full of joy and hope.

Bullies make me angry, whether they be kids who are trying to mug my kids, or people in television who say one thing and do another. A lot of comedians are bullies, because it’s a very individualistic profession: people have their own agendas.

It’s quite hard to live with integrity without letting your anger do bad things. There are plenty of times when you have to face people up with stuff. And you are under pressure to compliment people when you don’t actually mean it.

I’m semi-famous. When I was in Starbucks the other day, two blokes just sat and watched me eat, which was a bit disconcerting. I could do without that. But I can’t complain.

I’d choose the Dalai Lama to be locked in a church with, because we’d have quite an interesting con­versation, seeing things from a different angle, and he’d probably make the tea as well.

Milton Jones was talking to Terence Handley MacMath.

10 Second Ser­mons . . . and even quicker illustra­tions is published by DLT (£5.99 (CT Bookshop £5.40); 978-0-232-52882-4) (Faith, 14 October).