I think you often learn from failure. Success just teaches you how great you were, but in fact it's knowing what will fail that will help you to make the right choices.

I always have a feeling you should move the playing field and the minute you know what you're doing, you're wrong. Therefore, I wanted us not to try to follow Spamalot immediately, but to do something different. This is perfect because it uses all the same skills, like story telling and lyric writing and music writing, but it's presenting it in a different form. And of course it gives me and John a nice chance to perform and show off which is also fun.

You initially become funny as a kid because you're looking for attention and love. Psychologists think that's all to do with mother abandonment. I think John Cleese has his depressions, and Terry Gilliam's the same. All of us together make one completely insane person.

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.

They're a typical Hollywood audience. All the kids are on drugs and all the adults are on roller skates.

I like the idea of being out there regularly with an audience and with a funny gang of people. That's what I grew up with - doing television, doing shows every week.

The Minister of Transport issued this appeal to motorists: Can anyone give him a lift to Leicester?