The path of my life is strewn with cow pats from the devil's own satanic herd!

I mean I can do it when I'm very relaxed, and with good friends, then I think I can be amusing.

It's not easy to take a sit-com and turn it into a feature.

It's the demand in many ways of modern television drama - it's very low key and naturalistic, and, generally speaking, the characters that I've played have not been low key and naturalistic.

We haven't made any particular decision [on Maigret], I haven't been asked if I want to carry on with it. All these things are a matter of whether you feel as though the idea is developing and whether it's still interesting to play.

At the moment, I'm certainly not thinking 'never again', but neither am I thinking 'I can't wait to play that part again'. I'm somewhere in between.

I tend to play rather odd men. People that are slightly odd or eccentric, or have a more particular attitude to life.