At Cambridge, you have to kiss the vice-chancellor's fingers. But I missed out on that, 'cause I was doing a matinee. I don't want to kiss a strange man's fingers anyway.

I don't necessarily know much about comedy, I don't spend a lot of time watching it. Mainly because all my life for about 50 years I've had comedy.

You initially become funny as a kid because you're looking for attention and love. Psychologists think that's all to do with mother abandonment. I think John Cleese has his depressions, and Terry Gilliam's the same. All of us together make one completely insane person.

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.

A nod's as good as a wink to a blind bat!

If you're famous, you have to [be overly generous], otherwise people say, "Eric Idle came in and only left me $4." I always tip more than people expect.

Well we were lucky because we started in Canada where everybody has a sense of humour! We flirted a little while with Josh Groban. He was personally interested in it. He said oh I'd love to do something different, and I said well it's pretty different! But in the end the dates didn't work out.