I did a TV show called 'Lenny Henry Dot TV' a couple of years ago and I hated it. These things always happen when you don't have time to reflect. And I didn't do anything on the telly for three years.
I am a creator of TV shows. 'Lifestyle' ran for 14 years... that was pleasurable. We also had 'Runaway' for eight years. We did two years of a show called 'The Start of Something Big', and we did a network series called 'Fame, Fortune and Romance.'
The cost of campaigning has skyrocketed in recent years because of the falloff in TV viewership. With only one-third as many people watching TV as did 20 years ago, politicians have responded by buying three times as many ads, driving the cost of campaigning to levels which only favored candidates can afford.
When I was younger, I did a TV show in the U.K. for a couple years, and I learned a lot from that. It taught me a lot about being known amongst your peers and having to deal with a lot of derision from them. It's not easy being known as 'the kid from the TV show.' Not in school it's not.
I'd worked in TV for a number of years before Strictly,' doing kids' telly and a couple of Saturday-night shows, but nothing on that scale.
During seventy years of TV, the audience came to feel that the rules are, you can't kill the second lead on your TV show! Whatever's going to happen, it's all okay because there's no way they can kill the star.
But I don't only get recognized for 'Friday the 13th.' I was on a TV show called' I've Got a Secret.' I was on that show for ten or eleven years. The older people always remember me from that.
They've been screaming about the death of literacy for years, but I think TV is the Gutenberg [printing] press. I think TV is the only thing that keeps us vaguely in democracy even if it's in the hands of the corporate culture. If you're an artist you write in your time. Moaning about the fact that maybe people read more books a hundred years ago - that's not true. I think the same percentage has always read.
The writers' strike a couple years ago was a bonanza for reality TV shows new and old.
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.
We did a version of 'You Bet' called 'Wanna Bet' in the U.S. a couple of years ago. It was a good little show but the network put it on over the summer on Mondays so nobody watched it.
The good news about showcasing chefs and the TV shows is they've attracted a lot more smart kids to the profession than 30 years ago. On the downside, though, these young chefs all say they want their own restaurant and their own TV show.
I'm not interested in the TV much. I quit watching the news a couple years ago and my outlook on life has gotten a whole lot better.
I rarely watch TV, and in the past two years, I've done three TV shows. It's quite interesting.
I think the 24-hour news cycle has helped exaggerate the differences between the parties. You can always find someone on TV somewhere carping about something. That didn't happen 20 years ago.
I hear radio plays that I did 20 years ago and I can't bear it; I see things on telly that I made six months ago and I just hate them. I could name on one hand the things that I think are OK; the rest of it is just rubbish and embarrassing.
When I was younger, I did a TV show in the U.K. for a couple years, and I learned a lot from that. It taught me a lot about being known amongst your peers and having to deal with a lot of derision from them.