Why are there no windows in the toilets on aeroplanes? To protect you from the most dedicated perverts on the planet, hanging off the wing to get a peep?

Once you become successful, people know where you live, the type of house you live in, the kind of car you drive, the clothes you wear, and so it would be patronising to go and talk like a welder. Welding's a mystery to me now. You can't go back, your life changes every day.

Chic Murray once told me he fell in the street, and a woman said to him, "Did you fall?" He said, "No, I'm tryin' to break a bar of chocolate in my back pocket."

What is it with McDonald's staff who pretend they don't understand you unless you insert the 'Mc' before the item you're ordering? It has to be a McChicken burger...a chicken burger gets blank looks. Well, I'll have a McStraw and jam it into your McEyes, you f**cking McTosser!

Well, the film's not only pricking the pomposity of the Church, it's pricking the pomposity, and sometimes you would think fraudulence, of the insurance companies. I had never read anything like this until I was doing the film, but Mark [Joffe, the director] and people showed me stuff where, like a flood, it mattered where the water came from. If you're flooded from above, you get the money; if you're flooded from below, you don't. What's that about?

What always staggers me is that when people blow their noses, they always look into their hankies to see what came out. What do they expect to find?

The religion in Scotland is one of the most patronising things... after the weather.