Tension is wonderful for making people laugh.

The Americans all love 'The Holy Grail', and the English all love 'Life Of Brian', and I'm afraid on this one, I side with the English.

God was treated like this powerful, erratic, rather punitive father who has to be pacified and praised. You know, flattered.

Come to me. I want to plow you like a Calgary driveway at Christmas.

My mum died about three years ago at the age of 101, and just towards the end, as she began to run out of energy, she did actually stop trying to tell me what to do most of the time.

I was very sad to hear of the death of Ronnie Barker, who was such a warm, friendly and encouraging presence to have when I started in television. He was also a great comic actor to learn from.

But then acting is all about faking. We're all very good at faking things that we have no competence with.