I think if my eight-year-old self could see me at the Royal Albert Hall winning a prize for playing the Doctor on telly, he would need a stiff shot of Irn-Bru.

I think if my eight-year-old self could see me at the Royal Albert Hall winning a prize for playing the Doctor on telly, he would need a stiff shot of Irn-Bru.

I mean, you know, while I'm acting on stage I'm ranking quite high, but in a room with Barack Obama I'm probably into negative digits. I never feel very famous.

I've always been a geek and slightly awkward… slightly umm… I was never the cool kid at school.

There's a morality... I think there's a moral compass but whether that comes from religion or just from being a good person, and where one starts and the other begins... I'm a good person, I hope. But I'm never as good as I want to be, never as nice as I want to be, never as generous as I want to be.

An accent has to do with the way your mouth works and the sounds that come out of your head, but somehow it informs everything about you.

I was always going to act, literally ever since I was tiny. In fact, I have Doctor Who to thank for that. I wanted to become an actor after being obsessed with Tom Baker, the fourth Doctor Who, in the 1970s. His was the definitive performance of all time in anything.