I'm not really a celebrity; I'm just vestigially left over from doing stuff from before.

Monty Python only became valuable when it was sold to Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in America. They didn't pay much either, but the series has been shown repeatedly, which led to lucrative tapes, CDs and DVDs.

Know what I mean? Eh, eh, Nudge nudge, Say no more?

Subversion is what I do.

You could write a joke in the pub at lunchtime and watch it performed on television that evening.

Talent is always more interesting - ambition is not interesting. If you have talent, you have to find ways of expressing it, but you may not be a success in the world's terms.

When we graduated [ from Cambridge], we were grabbed right into television. I was grabbed straight into the practice of writing comedy. It was all writing and performing. You wrote something in order for you to perform it.