When you see two writers named on a movie, one of them did some drafts and got the boot.

My wife likes history and documentaries, but I'm not so keen on them. I generally go and do some work if there's one of those on.

An adaptation I was working on of Trollope's 'The Pallisers' has been axed by the BBC... I was also going to do Dickens' 'Dombey and Son' but they've asked me to do 'David Copperfield' instead.

Taking the humour out of Dickens, it's not Dickens any more.

As a fairly innocent teenager, growing up in a village in Wales, I just thought, "God, I would like to go and hang about Soho and write great poetry and try to avoid drinking myself to death."

Most actors hate readthroughs - they're exposing themselves before they're ready to, and before they've bonded. But I love them because they give us all the first inkling of what the whole show is going to be like, how each part affects every other part, and we won't see that again until it's all edited together.

I know that a ridiculous number of classic serials have been commissioned, and that reviews show a reaction against them. The critics seem fed up.