Slightly forgettable movies can sometimes make great musicals.

I used to go to the gym regularly and swim an awful lot, but that was when I was unemployed and knew leisure intimately.

Sci-fi and fantasy used to be a TV staple throughout my childhood. Then it just stopped dead. It was seen as culty, a minority interest.

When I was your age — about, ooh, a thousand years ago — I loved a good bedtime story. The Three Little Sontarans. The Emperor Dalek's New Clothes. Snow White and the Seven Keys to Doomsday, eh? All the classics.

Europe is so much the home of Horror, with its myths of vampires, werewolves, witchcraft and the undead, yet it's like those myths were exported to Hollywood, leaving Europe the room to develop a new tradition as a way of processing its traumas, particularly the two world wars.

All pleasure should be a little bent, don't you think?

Even when I was a child, I always wanted to be older. I realised just in time that it's a mistake and to enjoy my youth while I had it.