Acting in a stage play is like working the evening shift in an office.

Ninety-eight per cent of laughter is nothing to do with jokes, which do not deserve to bear the weight of all the funny stuff in the world.

It's worth turning up to an awards gig if you know you've won one but, since you never do know, it's not worth it.

Reading the play at home, however fulfilling, can never be the vivacious experience that Shakespeare intended.

Global warming, the ongoing destruction of the planet, Third World debt, the uselessness of the railways, the takeover by the corporations, the scary George Bush person: all these things are important and should be animating me into outrage. Yet somehow they do not.

After you've read a novel, you only retain a vague memory of its contents. You remember the atmosphere, the odd image or phrase or vivid cameo.

It is more interesting to be compared to someone famous, because it lets you gauge what perceptions people have about your appearance.