There is nothing better than playing a scene with John Cleese or Maggie Smith. It's electric. But I don't think I'm the sort of person who needs to have an outer ego in order to produce something. I realised that through the travel programmes.

From my travels around the world I have seen how much damage and pollution is done by the careless disposal of waste. It is also evident that we in the West produce far more and throw away far more than the developing world, almost without thinking

If atheists are deaf to the word of God, then theists are blind to the ways of man.

Once the travel bug bites there is no known antidote, and I know that I shall be happily infected until the end of my life

My parents have been married forty-two years. I wonder how many of those were happy.

There are people who travel because they want to push themselves to physical limits, people who walk across deserts or cycle across the Antarctic - like Ranulph Fiennes, who just does it because it's there. And then there are people like me, who are just genuinely curious about the world.

I cut down trees, I skip and jump, I like to press wild flowers. I put on women's clothing and hang around in bars.