I don't like animation. I hate animation, actually.

My first professional job was appearing in a disastrous theatre production of Oh, What a Lovely War in Leicester Rep, shortly after leaving Cambridge.

I live in a Spanish-style hillside home in Los Angeles, California. I paid $900,000 in 1995. It's perhaps worth about $3m now. Thankfully, I paid off my mortgage before the crash because I could see it coming. I worried that I would be caught having to pay off a very high mortgage for a house I couldn't sell.

One of the reasons we moved to L.A. in the first place [was] so that it was no big deal that I was in show business. We decided if we move[d] to L.A., then everyone in one way or another was involved in it.

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.

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

I used to collect Persian rugs and real estate - you should be able to walk on and live in your money. I had to give up the rugs because I'm allergic to mould.