I find it rather easy to portray a businessman. Being bland, rather cruel and incompetent comes naturally to me.

I can never do better than 'Fawlty Towers,' whatever I do. Now I very much want to teach young talent some rules of the game.

When you've been doing comedy for forty years, you really do know most of the jokes. And even if you don't know a specific joke, you can pretty much guess what it's going to be.

Muslims, who have a completely different value system, come to the West, then they should accept that there are certain basic values in the West intrinsic to our culture. Just as I wouldn't suggest that any Westerner walk down the streets of Saudi Arabia in a bikini.

The trouble with the British is that they are not interested in ideas. If Jesus came back today and offered to speak for an hour on British television, they would say, "What! Another talking head?

When I was a child and I was upset about something, my mother was not capable of containing that emotion, of letting me be upset but reassuring me, of just being with me in a calming way. She always got in a flap, so I not only had my own baby panics, fears and terrors to deal with, but I had to cope with hers, too. Eventually I taught myself to remain calm when I was panicked, in order not to upset her. In a way, she had managed to put me in charge of her. At 18 months old, I was doing the parenting.

I can't tell you how scary it can be walking onto a movie and suddenly joining this family - it's like going to somebody else's Christmas dinner; everyone knows everyone and you're not quite sure what you're supposed to sit.