We know that once we stop learning and call ourselves learned, we become useless members of the scientific society.

The war broke out, and for a number of years I lived in darkness, with the memory of the lakes, the trees and the skies of Sweden, until I returned in 1946 to spend two unforgettable years in the laboratory of Hugo Theorell.

Due to these various circumstances, when I entered the Catholic University of Louvain in 1934, I had already travelled in a number of European countries and spoke four languages fairly fluently. This turned out to be a valuable asset in my subsequent career as a scientist.

Although attracted by the humanities, I had chosen medicine as a career, seduced by the image of the 'man in white' dispensing care and solace to the suffering. But science was lurking around the corner, in the form of an unpaid student assistantship in the laboratory of physiology.

Science is a hobby, and I'm really into it, but it's not my job. My job is to learn about comedy and to make people laugh. Science, for me, is probably a bit like Danny Baker's love of football or Rod Stewart's obsession with train sets.

Some of the best ideas come from sheer discovery, and not by some masterminded, preconceived genius.

My parents have always been incredibly supportive, driving me back and forth to Stratford and so on. They realised from an early age that I wouldn't go into medicine because I couldn't do biology and chemistry.

Indeed, the history of 20th century physics was in large measure about how to avoid the infinities that crop up in particle theory and cosmology. The idea of point particles is convenient but leads to profound, puzzling troubles.