I have never been on a vacation. I’ve gone on things where I work and I go to vacation destinations but I don’t really like to relax. It’s not something I enjoy doing. I had a job in Hawaii and it was on a Friday night, so I said to my wife: “You want to go to Hawaii?” We’d go Friday morning and come home Sunday night. The first thing I did there was rent a car and drive all the way round the island. It took me about six hours. When I got back to the hotel I said to someone who worked there: “I drove around to the other side of the island”, and she said: “Oh, I’ve never been there.”

So I asked: “Where are you from?” and she said: “Here”, and I said: “You grew up here and you’ve never been over there? I’ve only been here seven hours and I’ve seen the entire place.” Right away I knew something was odd.

So I do the show I’d agreed to do and the next day I figure I’m not a sit-on-the-beach-type person but I’ll go sit on the beach anyway.

I sit down and I look at my watch and it says 10 o’clock. After what feels like about four hours I look at my watch again and it says 10.15. I go: “Oh, great, my watch is broken. It must be the sun or something.”

So a guy passes me and I ask him the time and he says: “10.15.” I’ve only been here for 15 minutes watching fat people drink Mai Tais.

By noontime I’m pulling my hair out, so I say: “Honey, I’ve got to get out of here.” So I came back. I’m just not a vacation guy.

I don’t mind travelling if I have a task, but my view of Europe is: “Excuse me, I didn’t order this.” You know, they eat all the parts of the animal that we throw away. And the money has naked people on it.

My wife loves to travel. The deal is that I will send her, her entire high-school graduation class and all her friends as long as I don’t have to go. Because I just get dragged about. The other day somebody said something about the Eiffel Tower, and I said: “Some day I’ll see the Eiffel Tower.” And my wife gave me this look and I said: “What?” And she said: “We were on the Eiffel Tower.”

I said: “I’ve never been to the Eiffel Tower.” She said: “Yes, we were there.” I said: “No, we weren’t.” She said: “Yes, we were. I have a picture of you there.”

“Let me see it.” I was sure I’d have passed a lie detector test that I’d never been to the Eiffel Tower.

So I’m just not a travel guy. I have a beautiful home in Beverly Hills. I even have a pool. Mind you, I have only been in it twice. Once to fix the light, and that time I was in for no more than four minutes.

The second time, I thought I’d better try it out, seeing as it is my garden. I was in for about two minutes but felt rather like a Ritz cracker lying there in the water, so I got out. That was nine years ago.

Although I’m Scottish and Italian, I’m way more Scottish. As a kid, we weren’t big vacation people; we’d just do day trips – you go some place and come back at night.

There must be something better you can do than waste your money going on a trip. So I live in a 70-mile zone from my house. I take cars and go 70, 80, 100 miles out, but I always have to be back that night because I’m working somewhere.

Having said all this, I am lucky. I don’t have a particularly stressful job, not a hard job. You know – write joke, tell joke, get cheque. It couldn’t be simpler. So I will never retire. I’ll “die down in the mine” as my Scottish ancestors might have said.