"Ludicrous concepts…like the whole idea of a "war on terrorism". You can wage war against another country, or on a national group within your own country, but you can't wage war on an abstract noun. How do you know when you've won? When you've got it removed from the Oxford English Dictionary?"

"Why do I feel so exercised about what we think of the people of the Middle Ages?...I guess it's because so many of their voices are ringing vibrantly in my ears – Chaucer's, Boccaccio's, Henry Knighton's, Thomas Walsingham's, Froissart's, Jean Creton's... writers and contemporary historians of the period who seem to me just as individual, just as alive as we are today. We need to get to know these folk better in order to know who we are ourselves."

"The thing was, there's nothing funny about what Christ said. What's funny, really, is the fact that, you know, Christ said all these really good things about "Love thy neighbor" and everything, and for the next 2,000 years people are killing each other and torturing each other because they can't quite decide how he said it."

"For me real peace is lying on a river bank in summer with a sprig of grass in my mouth. I have friends who jet off to a luxury hotel. I think, 'How can you enjoy such ghastly luxury?'"

"Now, Piers Morgan is a bit of a ****."

"My family wasn't troubled by much dysfunction. The most hotly contested issue was probably 'Who is going to have the most peas?'. Consequently, I haven't got much time for angst. Anything that happens to you is your own responsibility."

"Mel and I genuinely get on. It's like another marriage. He is very straightforward and never loses his rag. I run around in a frenzy most of the time. London cabbies will say to me, 'Your mate Mel's a miserable bastard', but he's far more grounded than me."

"We need a corrective on who is a genuine artist. I'm an opportunist. I have no talent. That's true of 99 per cent of people in the British media. Ricky Gervais or Graham and Arthur who wrote Father Ted or Armando Iannucci are God-like as they have talent. Everyone else is a drone."

"My voice is not so much 'bel canto' as 'can belto'."

"I suffer fools gladly because I am one of them."

"Anyone who, for 25 years, has built a career on such tenuous foundations as a high-pitched giggle, a raspberry and a sprinkling of top 'Cs' needs all the friends he can get."

"We are with you sir!"