I remember Tom Baker once said to me many years ago: never go back, particularly with TV shows. This is because the track record for characters returning to series they've left is not very good.
I don’t go back and look at my early work, because the last time I did, many years ago, it left me cringing. If one publishes, then one is creating a public record of Learning to Write.
Think of me, think of me fondly When we've said goodbye. Remember me once in a while Please promise me, you'll try. Recall those days, look back on all those times, Think of those things we'll never do. There will never be a day When I won't think of you. Can it be? Can it be Christine? Long ago, it seems so long ago, How young and innocent we were. She may not remember me But I remember her.
I was at a dinner party many years ago,sitting along from Tom Stoppard, who in those days smoked not just between courses,but between mouthfuls. An American woman watched in disbelief. "And you so intelligent!" "Excuse me?" said tom "Knowing those things are going to kill you" she said "and still you do it." "How differently I might behave" Tom said, "if immortality were an option
But I don't know, maybe it's just as well I never got there. I dreamed about it for so many years. I used to go to English movies just to look at the streets. I remember years ago a guy I knew told me that people going to England find exactly what they go looking for. I said I'd go looking for the England of English Literature, and he nodded and said: "It's there.
My dream many years ago would've been to continue to write and record songs in record/album form for years to come, but now records aren't what they were then - and so it doesn't actually feel very good to make a record of songs.
I was born in 1971, and Tom Baker was sort of my obsession as a kid and that's why we got him to do the voice over for 'Little Britain' because I was actually obsessed with Tom Baker.
It's an ethical pact I've made with myself and with the reader - not to invent. And when I can't remember, I say I can't remember. I'm just appalled by the memoirs published by people who regurgitate dialogue, conversations from when they were small children, and they go on for three or four pages. I can't even remember what we said to each other ten minutes ago! How can I remember what was said sixty years ago? It's not possible.
If you'd have asked me two years ago, I'd have been like "No, anything and everything. Go for it." Now, I want to focus on doing the best I can each time. But I think it's hard for me to only put out one record a year. Because I get too antsy. But it's good I'm learning to do that, because each record counts. And you should make it count.
My plan was to put him on a go-kart track when he was six years-old but he was with his mum at a track in Genk and he called me up crying because he saw a younger guy driving on the track. He said to me 'Daddy, I want to do this,' so when I got home from the Canadian GP, I bought him a go-kart and that's how he started.
You'd think that would have been forgotten long ago. But no, no sooner has a little grass grown over it than some clumsy camel comes along and rakes it all up again." Caroline giggled. She was probably imagining Aunt Glenda as a camel. "This is not a TV series, Maddy," said Lady Arista sharply. "Thank goodness, no, it isn't," said Great-aunt Maddy. "If it were, I'd have lost track of the plot ages ago.
I remember watching Robert Powell many years ago. He did 'Jesus of Nazareth,' and I remember thinking that was probably my favorite. Once I got the role, I didn't want to watch anything, because it only influences what you do.
Many years ago... many, many years ago, I brought up a boy, and I said to him, 'Son, if you ever become a writer, try to write a good part for your old man sometime.' Well, by cracky, that's what he did!
My first series regular was on a TV show called 'Starved,' which was so many years ago, and I was the only guy they brought in. So I go in, I read, it goes well. The next day I hear I got the job, and I rejoiced.
I turned down all the requests for the rights to the books, for years, mostly because they wanted the rights to the characters, and to turn it into a TV series. This would have allowed them to do anything they wanted with the characters, and that just wasn't an option for me.
Some TV shows are like really good novels in that there are enough episodes that you start to have your own feelings about how the characters should act. When the scriptwriters go slightly wrong, when they make the character make a left turn that he or she wouldn't do, you know enough about the characters to say, "No, that's not what she would do there. That's wrong." You can actually argue with a TV show in a way that you can't do as much with movie - you inhabit a TV show in the way you inhabit a novel.
I read the script [ of 'Steve Jobs' movie ], and it was very, very good. I wasn't sure they would want me to be in the movie, but I auditioned for it. Which I hadn't done in a few years. But I had auditioned in the previous few years for another movie that I did not get the part. And so my track record wasn't good. But I really wanted to audition because I was worried that I was going to blow it, and I wanted it to be on them for choosing me.