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.

Many years ago I also bought a house in Provence for about 70,000 francs. It had no electricity or running water, and no road leading to the house, but gradually we made improvements. It's my escape and I love it.

The next step will be for the colonists on Mars to throw off the hand of the United States. There will be this wonderful historical irony. When the people on Mars write a declaration of independence saying, 'We hold these truths to be self-evident...', the US will be rather pissed off.

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.

I got locked into a tradition [at Cambridge] of doing comedy.

Reading Alan Zweibel makes me laugh out loud. And yet it is not a particularly funny name.

I think comedy's often the little and the large, isn't it?