I am a big man, but I've allowed my condition to deteriorate by being overweight.

As any actor will tell you, the hardest thing to do is small parts, because you focus all your attention and concentration on that small part. When you're playing the lead part, you don't have time to think about the whole of it, so you just have to steam on and get on with it.

I was well aware of the fact that once you appeared in Doctor Who as something else, you were ruled out for the part of the Doctor: that was a kind of well known thing in the business.

It was lovely to do The Knock because I haven't done anything really significant since Doctor Who.

Small though it is, the human brain can be quite effective when used properly.

It's not so much a thankless task, it's more a job with no thanks

I could, I think, quite easily have gone to Oxford. I got four good A levels, but my father's income was such that I wouldn't have got a grant, and he wouldn't let me go to university, and that was the end of it.