Modest about our national pride - and inordinately proud of our national modesty.

I like making films about old people because they are repositories of amazing stories that they tell well. And they're incredibly good telly.

I've got a very peculiar sort of fame, based on being on the telly. It doesn't mean you have the lifestyle people expect.

All the libel lawyers will tell you there's no libel any more, that everyone's given up.

England Their England by AG Macdonell which was written in the thirties and is about a young Scotsman who's got shell shocked during the First World War… I love it.

Internet journalism is not a world we know very well at all. It's conducted more on the screen and less in bars, which makes it rather less useful for getting stories about people throwing up over one another, which is what one's after.

Modest about our national pride - and inordinately proud of our national modesty.