Between the marriages, I shagged my way round television studios like a mechanical digger.

You don’t just give up. You don’t just let things happen. You make a stand! You say no! You have the guts to do what’s right, even when everyone else just runs away.

Never knowingly be serious. Rule 27.

When writing comedy, you have to have the confidence to believe that there is only one type of relationship in the world, and we are all having it, that all men behave in the same way and so do all women.

The way you get your script to the right people is that you put it in an envelope. It's easy. The difficult bit is writing something that is so good people will take a punt on a brand new writer.

You could only draw conclusions about my personal sexual politics if you proceed from the assumption that I was presenting the characters as the way it is and the way it ought to be. But both are clearly defined as deranged – it’s love among the mad. He’s a psycopath, so is she. She’s prepared to throw him to the dogs until he works out the code, he’s prepared to let her nearly get executed. They’re not really going to buy a house and a Volvo together. I’m not saying this is how people should date!

You take this cold, remarkable, difficult, dangerous, borderline psychopath man, and you wonder what might have happened to him had he not met his best friend, a friend that no one would have put him with, this solid, dependable, brave, big-hearted war hero. I think people fall in love, not with Sherlock Holmes or Dr. Watson, but with their friendship. I think it is the most famous friendship in fiction, without a doubt.