I like being a foreigner. For me, to live in California is very pleasant - I'm more comfortable not feeling a part of everything, not feeling responsible for the government or the roads or the health system.

If the studios paid the artists, how would they ever be able to afford the executives?

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 liked doing live things, and with the Circus we had a live audience.

My father, who was a sergeant in the RAF during the Second World War, was killed in a hitchhiking accident while returning home on compassionate leave. As a result, my mother had to get work, as a nurse, and at seven the RAF put me into a boarding school and ex-orphanage called the Royal Wolverhampton School.

John Cleese once told me he'd do anything for money. So I offered him a pound to shut up, and he took it.

People who are interested in money are really uninteresting people. They look like Donald Trump.