When I was doing Bean more than I’ve done him in the last few years, I did strange things - like appearing on chat shows in character as Mr. Bean.

Certainly in the second film [Maigret's Dead Man], which is quite a more unpleasant and darker story, it's quite different in tone and feel.

I want to express myself in a different way. I have a performing inclination.

Get that right, then- if you get the quality right, then the marketability or whatever; your ability to sell videos or your ability to earn money or whatever, will follow naturally. But try to be creatively lead rather than market lead. And that's important to me.

I've read about eight or ten of the original novels, and one of them is where Maigret's in bed for the entire story! His wife is running around and solving the case!

A law which attempts to say you can criticise and ridicule ideas as long as they are not religious ideas is a very peculiar law indeed.

The decision to do it [play Maigret] was related to the fact that the character is a very ordinary man, and generally speaking I haven't played very many ordinary men.