The improv technique does one of two things. It either makes you raise your game, or retreat into a corner and decide to find a new career. But you do feel like you want to match and develop things.

If you have a great part, you have the opportunity to give a good performance. The greatest actors get the best parts, and the best parts make the greatest actors. There are plenty of people who are as talented, who just never got the part.

I'm on the verge of taking a stand.

Somehow I find it easier to inhabit characters if they are a little bit pathetic. I do seem to have an affinity with pathetic people.

I like to think of myself as versatile, and I certainly have the most varied career, so I'm very, very lucky in that.

Anybody who was a politician at one stage - when they were at the "I'd like to be a train driver" stage of their lives - must also have thought: "I'd like to make the world a better place if possible." So, I think that's why most politicians go into it. They don't want to take over the world and most go into it for good reasons and then, presumably, are beset by endless things stopping them from following their natural inclination to do the right thing.

I meet people who are famous, and it's made me realise that fame has huge lifestyle disadvantages. I'm nervous about that. I don't want to become a celebrity.