Brendan Coyle

The qualities I am looking for in Miss Right are intelligence and humour.

I took a gamble in becoming an actor and my dream job has been realised.

I had to escape the destruction of my father's bankruptcy and all that difficulty.

I would have loved to have been a footballer like my great uncle Matt Busby, but I knew quite early on that I wasn't going to make the grade. Luckily I was told by the age of 13 that I wasn't good enough. That's not a bad thing. You see this 'X Factor' generation of kids now who don't accept that they're not good enough.

Acting meant so much to me.

My dad was a master butcher and I trained to be a butcher when I left school. I didn't enjoy it at the time but I love cooking now, so perhaps I would have been a chef.

You can't be a casual observer of something humorous - you have to engage, you have to find it funny for the relationship between actor and audience to work.

When I was in my 30s, I was at the end of a long-term relationship and going through a very hard time. I'd had about 15 different addresses and a series of relationships. I thought, 'It's time to have a look at yourself.'

I can pretty much say all of us know when 'Downton' is going to end. This is a show with a finite life.

I'd seen a play of 'Richard III' in Coventry when I was 15, which sowed the seeds that you could act for a living.

I think with Sky and BBC Three and Channel 4, there are some great television platforms, and the stand-up movement in this country is phenomenal. It's like rock n' roll here. Britain's a funny place and there's a lot of funny people coming out of there and a lot of people are finding mediums to express themselves.

Britain's a funny place and there's a lot of funny people coming out of there and a lot of people are finding mediums to express themselves.