I've always found life quite difficult to explain to people or to myself.

English television from the Fifties to the Nineties was the least bad in the world, and now it's just as bad as it is anywhere.

British press think entirely in clichés, and when they do come across creative work, they think that it must be based on something, because they don't realize that you can create things that aren't based on things.

Would you take a billion dollars, if as part of the deal the Earth were made uninhabitable a year after your death? ... well, of course not; you care about your friends, above all your children, any grandchildren. But ... what if the deal calls for the planet to be poisoned a thousand years later? We feel strong obligations to generations in the near future - should we not feel the same way about our children's great-grandchildren and generations beyond them?

When you get to my age, and I'm 66 now, you realize that the world is a madhouse and that most people are operating in fantasy anyway. So once you realise that, it doesn't bother you much.

If you are leaping a ravine, the moment of takeoff is a bad time to be considering alternative strategies.

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