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.

If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play.

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.

I think that money spoils most things, once it becomes the primary motivating force.

I don't want to have to start being unselfish again. The great thing about being on your own is you do what you damned well like.

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.

I tend to have an odd split in my mind: I tend to look at it as a writer and when the writing thing is OK and I'm happy with it, then I put on my actor's hat.