I was always a sports nut but I've lost interest now in whether one bunch of mercenaries in north London is going to beat another bunch of mercenaries from west London.

When you've only got few days of rehearsal before you're in the studio, it's wonderful to start off with people that you have good, friendly, tolerable relationships to start with, for the simple reason that you don't have to spend 24 hours figuring out how sensitive they are, and can you give them a line reading, or how do you have to give them direction.

I've always called myself a writer/performer, not an actor because I basically write what I perform.

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.

The one thing I remember about Christmas was that my father used to take me out in a boat about ten miles offshore on Christmas Day, and I used to have to swim back. Extraordinary. It was a ritual. Mind you, that wasn't the hard part. The difficult bit was getting out of the sack.

We all operate in two contrasting modes, which might be called open and closed. The open mode is more relaxed, more receptive, more exploratory, more democratic, more playful and more humorous. The closed mode is the tighter, more rigid, more hierarchical, more tunnel-visioned. Most people, unfortunately spend most of their time in the closed mode.

The most creative people have this childlike facility to play.