Lord, thy one-liners are as good as thy tricks. Thou art indeed an all-round family entertainer.

I think I have an inner confidence that my tastes are pretty simple, that what I find funny finds a wide audience. I'm not particularly intellectual or clever or minority-focused in my creative instincts. And I'm certainly not aware of suppressing more sophisticated ambitions.

When you play a serious role, as far as I'm concerned, I feel I'm using exactly the same skills, whatever they are, to play the role as you do with something more obviously comic. It's slightly different muscles, but the same skill set.

I'm sure that a French production of this [Maigret series] would be different. For better or worse, who's to say, but probably not very good for 8 o'clock on ITV.

We still have a tradition certainly in English television; it's faded a bit in the last five years, but we still have a tradition where the important thing is the quality and the challenging nature of the programming.

To criticise a person for their race is a manifestly irrational and ridiculous. But to criticise their religion - that is a right. That is a freedom.

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.