A lot of the fiction I read growing up was post-war American, and not all of it centers on Manhattan, but around people of the Mad Men generation, people like John Cheever and, in more modern times, Don DeLillo, who I always mention.

I did throw a lot of eggs into one basket, as you do in your teenage years - 'I am buying these records, I am wearing this'. I did quite a bit of that. You have to do it, wear your stupid shoes, wear your stupid hair.

You try various things when you're growing up. I was an attache in the Foreign Service for a while and then I drove a bulldozer, but neither of those panned out for me so it had to be stand-up.

One thing that's coming up a lot is: are you as grumpy as you appear from this Black Books thing.

Every generation likes to think that children don't read as much as they used to when they were young! You listen to some adults saying they were going around reading 'Ulysses' when they were seven or eight! I think children are voracious readers if you give them the right books and if you make those books accessible to them.

When you go into the studio or get up on the stage with people who have more experience or knowledge, you learn.

My father made sure that I had lots of levels of education - from ballroom-dancing to painting, commando training, theatre and magic.

I was a library rat and a bookworm. I read all the time. I walked to school reading books. I read under my desk.