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.

We destroy icons - that's what we do.

Don't want to turn into mini-me.

Subversion is what I do.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will make me go in a corner and cry by myself for hours.

We never have that thought! The whole object is to bite off more than you can chew. John [Du Prez] always says, Eric thinks of something completely insane and insists we go in that direction. It's the correct way to look at things and the correct place to start, I think.

Monty Python paid me £20,000 to write, direct and assemble them - the cheapskates! I told them I'd never earned less in a year since leaving Cambridge. The first show sold out in 43 seconds and we ended up performing ten in total. We had no idea there would be such demand.