Now, the country is in a terrible state, and you've blamed it on a number of things: Unemployment rate, the value of the pound and all that... wrll, it's because the national anthem is boring.

And then there was my mate who'd just been fitted with a brand new hearing aid. "It's the best in the world", he said. "What type is it?", I asked and he said "ten past twelve".

I've always been fascinated by the difference between the jokes you can tell your friends but you can't tell to an audience. There's a fine line you have to tread because you don't know who is out there in the auditorium. A lot of people are too easily offended.

A mate of mine has just told me he's shagging his girlfriend and her twin, I said how can you tell them apart, he said "her brothers got a moustache!"

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?

When I read 'Be real, don't get caught acting,' I thought, 'How the hell do you do that?'.

The desire to be a politician should bar you for life from ever being one.