The comedians all finished their acts with a song. They would get a certain amount of money from the song publishers and would use that money to pay the writers. None of them paid very much for their comedy material, but it all added up.

I used to like writing for comedians - I enjoyed the challenge of making other people funny.

Dictum on television scripts: We don't want it good - we want it Tuesday.

And when you're on your own there is that terrifying possibility that you may be the only person on the planet who thinks it's funny - and you have no way of finding out.

Middle age is when, whenever you go on holiday, you pack a sweater.

What is a harp but an oversized cheese slicer with cultural pretensions?

It's like your children talking about holidays, you find they have a quite different memory of it from you. Perhaps everything is not how it is, but how it's remembered.