The right to ridicule is far more important to society than any right not to be ridiculed because one in my view represents openness - and the other represents oppression.

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

The arts community still has a long lasting cynicism of the importance, or the artistic value, of comedy. Comedy is just farting about for money.

The Maigret stories are all very different in terms of the content and the way that the stories are told. They're not what I would call formulaic.

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

This is sort of inflection-free acting [playing Maigret], and I really wasn't sure if I could do it - you make your mind up on whether I've succeeded or not. But yes, I found it difficult when we were shooting; it was a couple of weeks before I settled into not worrying - to finding a way of delivering those lines - so my worries of many months before I think had been justified. I found it a difficult way of being.

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.