Everybody has their own free choice to do what they want.

I will jump on anybody's private plane at the drop of a hat. I'm an old-fashioned lower-middle-class boy.

There's no gap between the writer and the performer, which is what I think makes [Monty] Python unique. Five or six people who write Python and five or six who act it. That's what makes it unique.

I listen to the audience and try and bounce with them. All audiences are different. But they are all homo sapiens.

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.

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

I'm not really a celebrity; I'm just vestigially left over from doing stuff from before.