I've always written songs. I'd come home from school and play piano for hours on end, just banging around.

It just tends to be that the grass is always greener. If I'm doing a movie, I suddenly think, 'Oh God, I wish I could just get a play script I could get my teeth into.' If I'm doing eight shows a week in a West End musical, I think, 'God, how lovely it would be to be in a TV series right now.'

I've always written songs since I was a kid - always.

I'm always being introduced as 'Tony Award-winning Douglas Hodge.' It's extraordinary.

The only way I survived at school was by doing impersonations of teachers and pupils. That led to me winning a talent competition when I was 16; the prize was three or four gigs in working men's clubs. I was just showing off: at the time, I thought that's what acting was.

I had this contract to write songs for people when I was about 18. I don't think any of them were taken up; I was a complete failure at it! But I've kept doing it, writing little songs for myself.