Childhood didn't have a big influence on me, really - in fact I spent most of it plotting how to escape.

There is something essentially sanguine about me, which I am inclined to attribute to the fact that I was born by caesarean section. It must affect you.

Like many Catholics, I was very affected by the personality of Jesus and that impression, pious as it was, has stayed with me.

Shakespeare speaks for the human heart but Dickens speaks for the social man and for injustices.

To live another person's life is quite a weird thing.

I hated Sundays when I was growing up in Streatham, south London. Everything closed down and stopped.

When the BBC decided to bring Doctor Who back as a feature film a few years ago, one national newspaper ran a poll to ask its readers who should be the new Doctor, and I topped it.