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

I'm as poor as a church mouse, that's just had an enormous tax bill on the very day his wife ran off with another mouse, taking all the cheese.

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.

I have a problem with Porsches. They're wonderful cars, but I know I could never live with one. Somehow, the typical Porsche people-and I wish them no ill-are not, I feel, my kind of people. I don't go around saying that Porsches are a pile of dung, but I do know that psychologically I couldn't handle owning one.

Funny things tend not to happen to me. I am not a natural comic. I need to think about things a lot before I can be even remotely amusing.

The character [Maigret] is bound to change and develop, and I wouldn't like to claim that we are perfectly formed straight out of the box. I think it's what I'd call an 'optimistic start'. As you know, for me, no glass is anything other than half empty, so I apologise for my reticence in terms of promoting this programme.

It was the challenge of that that I found daunting, but also engaging and interesting [to play Maigret].