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!

What is wrong with inciting intense dislike of a religion if the activities or teachings of that religion are so outrageous, irrational or abusive of human rights that they deserve to be intensely disliked?

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 can be reasonably funny and light-hearted when I'm in the company of good friends, but I'm not a jokesmith. I tend to be quite serious.

It's a bit disconcerting being treated like Madonna.

ITV and the production company contacted me and asked if I fancied playing the role [of Maigret]. It took me a long time to decide to do it. In fact, I decided not to. I thought about it for some weeks, and thought 'perhaps not' and it went away for a while, and then it sort of came back. They said 'Are you sure you don't want to play him?', so I thought about it for a lot longer again, and eventually decided that I would.

What directors of television drama constantly tell you is 'Don't act it. Don't try. Don't emphasise that word'. Whereas with someone like Blackadder, even though he's a relatively low key character in a way, he did relish the lines that he had and the words that he was given, with a lot of inflection.