Most writers or performers walk around with the notion in their head that - a paranoid worry that maybe people don't like them.

Man the lifeboats. The idiots are winning.

Whenever anything nice happens in the world I always expect something appalling to happen immediately afterwards.

Am I living in a simulation?

Women - why aren't you running the world yet? Frankly I'm disappointed in you. Men are still far too dominant for their own good, and consequently we've made a testosterone-sodden pig's ear of just about everything: politics, the economy, religion, the environment ... you name it, it's in a gigantic man-wrought mess.

I've instinctively hated the Tories since birth.

"National Anthem" was just a funny idea I'd been knocking about. I initially thought about a beloved celebrity having to do that - and then I watched an episode of 24. In my head, I was writing almost a parody of a 24-style president woken in the middle of the night with a crisis. It seemed more interesting to play it ultrastraight and to have the viewer's initial reaction be one of laughter and disbelief - and just have the whole thing become progressively more uncomfortable.