Filming takes a lot out of you. It really does. It's immensely demanding, and you have to put the rest of your life in the icebox until you do your final shot.

All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?

I think there are so many activities going on, like mountaineering. You know, you would pay good money not to have to do that, and yet there are people racing out who want to spend their spare time clambering up rocks.

By watching the great, old comedians I picked up a few tricks about how to do physical comedy. And whenever I could learn something, I sort of added that to my repertoire.

It's too difficult to start right from scratch and try and be funny out of the blue.

Because, as we all know, it’s easier to do trivial things that are urgent than it is to do important things that are not urgent, like thinking. And it’s also easier to do little things we know we can do than to start on big things that we’re not so sure about.

What is absurd is not the teachings of the founders of religion, it's what followers subsequently make of it.