Most of the bad taste I've been accused of has been generic bad taste; it's been making fun of an idea as opposed to a person.

Although I had good hand-eye coordination, I was so tall and skinny and muscularly weak that I just was not well coordinated. But what I started to do quite early on was watch some of the great old silent comedians, like Laurel and Hardy and Chaplin, and then later on Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton.

All humour is critical, you know? You make stupid jokes. I mean, stupidity is an infirmity, isn't it?

Filming is like a long air journey: there's so much hanging around and boredom that they keep giving you food.

I would say that I began with a very edgy, very driven personality and after a sufficient amount of therapy over many, many years, I managed to become rather relaxed and happy.

When the target audience is American teenage kids, you can have problems. My generation prized really fine acting and writing. Sometimes you have to go back to the basic principles which underpin great visual comedy.

Why write about the past? Well, there's more of it.