I Believe: David Shrigley, artist

(Wattie Cheung)

* Contemporary art borrows the structure of a joke, then takes out the humour – that's what makes it art. In my twisted mind, it makes sense. But pretty much everything Gilbert and George do is funny.

* My aesthetic is a form of shorthand. I made a decision that I wasn't going to draw anything in a more sophisticated fashion than it needed to be.

* My parents are not at all interested in art and never thought I would be an artist.

* Art is not a great career path, as very few people make money from it. Then again, nobody expected to make money from it when I graduated, so it's changed a lot.

* Art can be a bit of a rich kid's thing to study, in the United States particularly.

* There's always good work coming out, there always has been and there always will be. I think it's ridiculous to say there's no good art around. It's true in any discipline. People always say there isn't any good music around, but they're not looking for it in the right place.

* I'm a big consumer of music. Now I've made some money, I really like the fact that I can buy records without having to worry. That's a big luxury in my life. The ironic thing is I get lots of freebies now.

* I tend to put too much emotional energy into following Nottingham Forest, but they're never on TV because they're crap.

* 'The Mighty Boosh' is the best comedy on TV by some distance. It's crazy, but quite sweet and innocent at the same time.

* I'm proud that I do what I enjoy, and I can do it and support my partner. And I don't have to get up dead early in the morning. I can wander around the house in my pyjamas and do drawings. That's quite nice, but I'm not sure if that's an achievement or just a stroke of good fortune. Maybe it's both.

David Shrigley's work will appear in the group exhibition Laughing in a Foreign Language at the Hayward Gallery ( www.haywardgallery.org.uk, tel: 0871 663 2500), from 25 January to 13 April