The thing about stand-up was, not only was I getting to write it without anybody saying I couldn't do it, but I got to perform it. It just kind of became therapy for me. I had just gotten through a break-up and I was talking about it a lot.
The man Dickens, whom the world at large thought it knew, stood for all the Victorian virtues - probity, kindness, hard work, sympathy for the down-trodden, the sanctity of domestic life - even as his novels exposed the violence, hypocrisy, greed, and cruelty of the Victorian age.