No, sometimes we just have to take liberties because the idea was so good. I wish we'd just gone with the idea that Patsy had been a man. It would have been fantastic.

People ask could I have written the show I wrote in 1990 now, and I don't think I could. I think it's much easier to offend people nowadays. People have grown quite sensitive, I think.

Well, I would definitely give up performing... But I would still sit down in an office and pretend to write with Dawn, even if we never produced anything, because it's just hilarious. I would miss that.

Me just being myself in public or on TV is the biggest nightmare in the world.

In the "Absolutely Fabulous" show, it's a fairly dysfunctional family, but they're not women who are constantly in search of a man. They don't live conventionally, they don't live in a conventional heterosexual relationship. Edina wishes all her children were gay, because as far as she's concerned it's the most glamorous most interesting thing to be. I think it's about bucking convention, really, and living life without apologizing.

I love the TV show, and if you make a bad movie it means you've soiled it. Just like if we made an advert. We were offered so many times and I'd say, look, this is the good thing, and you can't compromise that, because then you compromise the integrity of the characters.

Instant coffee is just old beans that have been cremated.