There is a huge fan base, they're very knowledgeable and very loyal. I was astonished - before I started working on the series I didn't know anything about Game of Thrones. I hadn't heard of the books. When it started going out, people were coming up to me in the street saying [fake cockney accent] "oh, Game of Thrones, f------ wonderful.

The job is exactly the same, it just goes on for longer on TV. Most feature films are 35-40 shooting days. This has 10 parts, with different directors for each block. We shoot with two, sometimes three cameras.

By the margin of fair Zurich's waters Dwelt a youth, whose fond heart, night and day, For the fairest of fair Zurich's daughters In a dream of love melted away.

I am made Hand of the King which gives me an enormous amount of power, which I use quite ruthlessly - but skilfully - and Dame Diana Rigg joins us [playing political mastermind the Queen of Thorns] and we have a couple of really good sparring moments.

Power is always a corrupting influence. In this mythical time - let's call it medieval, feudal - people in power are dictatorial and don't want their positions of power to be threatened.

We get a successful television series or something, and next season they give you less time and less money, which is something I've never really understood. That doesn't happen with Game of Thrones.

A car to pick me up every day, a chair with my name on it, everybody being very polite... what can you do except sit back and watch it all, try to take it all in?