For telling a good and incisive religious joke, you should be praised. For telling a bad one, you should be ridiculed and reviled. The idea that you could be prosecuted for the telling of either is quite fantastic.

Look, if I'd wanted a lecture on the rights of man, I'd have gone to bed with Martin Luther.

I don't really have plans like that [move towards more dramatic acting].

It is very linear storytelling, and I think that's not so much the fashion. I was watching a new drama the other night which was extremely non-linear, where you flash back and flash forward in ways that certainly keeps you on your toes as the audience. There's not much of that courage with the storytelling in our Maigret film.

The job is interesting, and the task is difficult, but the man [Maigret] is just a decent man doing a very ordinary job.

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.

[Maigret] is more internal. I think if we made more of these I might let him out a bit.