People can tell the truth much more freely when they're apparently lying.

I will jump on anybody's private plane at the drop of a hat. I'm an old-fashioned lower-middle-class boy.

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

We destroy icons - that's what we do.

There's no gap between the writer and the performer, which is what I think makes [Monty] Python unique. Five or six people who write Python and five or six who act it. That's what makes it unique.

If anything can survive the probe of humour it is clearly of value, and conversely all groups who claim immunity from laughter are claiming special privileges which should not be granted.

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.