To drink a cup of tea and put two sugars in and open a door and answer a telephone becomes incredibly time-consuming. Every scene for me is about, where am I going to park the cane? When I pick this up, where am I going to put the cane? That's a physical constraint.

When it comes to cakes and puddings, savouries, bread and tea cakes, the English cannot be surpassed.

I frequently dream of having tea with the Queen.

Some people are drawn naturally - there are natural guitarists, and there are natural piano players, and I think guitar implies travel, a sort of footloose gypsy existence. You grab your bag and you go to the next town.

As a real person, he wouldn't last a minute, would he? But drama is about imperfection. And we've moved away from the aspirational hero. We got tired of it, it was dull. If I was House's friend, I would hate it. How he so resolutely refuses to be happy or take the kind-hearted road. But we don't always like morally good people, do we?

It doesn't rain at all in California. Once a month, a man drives through spraying Evian.