Born Matthew Hall in Woking, Surrey, Harry Hill originally trained as a neurosurgeon and ran a cardiology and diabetes clinic until the early 1990s, when he became a full-time comedian. In 1992 he won the Perrier best newcomer award at the Edinburgh comedy festival. Soon after, he started presenting Harry Hill’s Fruit Corner on Radio 4, and between 2001 and 2012 he hosted TV Burp on ITV. Since then, he has worked on The Harry Hill Movie and I Can’t Sing! The X Factor Musical. His standup DVD Harry Hill: Sausage Time – Live from Leeds is released on 24 November.

Play: King Charles III

I’ve been to see a lot of mediocre stuff in the West End, so it takes quite a lot to get me out to the theatre. But I’d read some reviews and I was curious about the idea of it being in rhyming couplets. It’s set just after the Queen has died and Charles has ascended to the throne. It was really enthralling and the rhyming element really added to it. Tim Pigott-Smith played Prince Charles, although he wasn’t doing an impression – it was a bit more classy than that. But you really believed that he was King Charles III.

Book: Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

I’d seen the film years ago and thought it was OK, but this is a great book. It was written in the 1960s, and the plot is pretty bleak – but it’s the way he uses words and the economy of his writing that are impressive. I like to think he spent hours thinking about each sentence, because that’s how it reads, but I suspect it’s just someone who’s very talented and is able to write in that way. It’s very evocative of that period, where everyone breaks for lunch and has four martinis, and there’s cars with loads of chrome on.

TV: Gogglebox

TV Burp would take me a week to put together; I’d spend hours watching TV and agonising over what jokes to make and then Gogglebox comes along and does it in a really easy and simple way. It’s just people watching TV doing what everyone else does watching TV, which is basically shout at the telly and comment on it as it goes out. But what it pulls off is that it’s almost like a sitcom, in that you get to know these characters, and you like them or loathe them, and at times it’s funny and at others it’s really affecting.

Gig: Eels at the Royal Albert Hall

I’ve been a fan of Eels for a while, but I’d never seen them live until this summer. It was so good that we saw them twice. It’s the kind of music the frontman Mark Everett, or “E”, describes as “bummer rock”: kind of downbeat and a bit outsidery. But he’s very charismatic. It’s the kind of gig where the only people who are there are mad fans. Your sister might say: “Let’s go to a Take That concert” and you’ll go: “I’ll give it a try”, but the only people who go to Eels concerts are dyed-in-the-wool Eels fans. It’s like taking communion together.

Gallery: KW, Berlin

I just came back from Berlin, where we went to see a lot of art. In the KW gallery, they had this video installation by Kate Cooper. She’s done a CGI version of a woman with no self-awareness or self-knowledge, like a baby in a grown-up’s body. Because it’s CGI you’re aware something’s wrong, but it’s in this pin-sharp HD quality, and has this trippy music going under it – it was kind of hypnotic. Normally I sit down for two minutes and then move on to the next dark room with a video flickering in the corner, but with this I could have sat there all afternoon. 

Comedy: John Kearns

I’d done a couple of gigs with John Kearns in pubs, but I went to see his full show at the Soho theatre. He has a real talent and he’s very clever. I like the way he plays with the form of comedy, which I’m very interested in. Basically, all the jokes have already been made and it’s a question of how you reinvent them. I really enjoyed seeing him. And it was kind of a tough audience that night, and that’s often the best time to see a comedian, because you find out what they’ve got in reserve.