Executive producers don't have to do anything. Nor do any kind of producers. They just sit around on deck chairs watching stuff, and if it gets cold, they leave. Actually I suppose as a producer you've got to be involved in helping out with solving problems.

Right, we've got these institutions of media, these financial institutions, we have the means of distribution, we have the means of production, we have all these markets and maxims in place. How do we alter the consciousness, the fundamental unifying field? How do we influence change on that level to all of the world?

I've always been a 'your parents have got to come up to the school' type of person. Even now, when I do something wrong - if I say something inappropriate on a live tv show, for example - I half expect to have to deliver a note to Barbara Brand: 'Please come up to Channel 4 head office, Russell's done something despicable.

It would have been convenient to be gay. Just because of the grooming, the narcissism, stuff like that. But I have this kind of roaring heterosexuality. Traditional, uncomplicated heterosexuality, an almost cliched Robin Askwith thing.

The world isn't made of atoms, it's made of stories.

Even as a junkie I stayed true [to vegetarianism] - 'I shall have heroin, but I shan't have a hamburger.' What a sexy little paradox.

Normally, I'm good at first dates, 'cause that's the only date I ever have, so I know how to control it and be confident.