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

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

[Georges] Simenon could be very brave like that. You never quite know what you're going to get or how the story's going to be told.

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.

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

Although the great frustration about this [role] is the fact that there's one thing Maigret never does, and that's drive. He's always driven, or he takes the train, or he gets the bus. I was saying 'Well, why don't we ring the changes for the 21st Century, and stick him in the car?'. [Executive Producer and son of the author, John Simenon] said, 'Well, you can if you want, but there'll be lots of people who won't like it'. So he's a non-driver ... But no, Top Gear was never a consideration for me; and neither was I asked

I have always believed that there should be no subject about which one cannot make jokes, religion included. Clearly, one is always constricted by contemporary mores and trends because, after all, what one seeks above all is an appreciative audience.