I find it rather easy to portray a businessman. Being bland, rather cruel and incompetent comes naturally to me.
England is a fairly envious little country and it’s embodied in the press. They don’t like anyone being more distinguished than they are.
Nothing will stop you being creative more effectively as the fear of making a mistake.
If I can get you to laugh with me, you like me better, which makes you more open to my ideas. And if I can persuade you to laugh at the particular point I make, by laughing at it you acknowledge its truth.
Sense of humor is so much more subjective than anyone believes.
Laughter is a force for democracy.
Wine is wonderful stuff. But so many people are put off by the snobbery of it.
Most of the bad taste I’ve been accused of has been generic bad taste; it’s been making fun of an idea as opposed to a person.
Life is a terminal disease, and it is sexually transmitted.
Your Mother was A Hamster and you Father Smelled of elder berries.
I think the hard thing for young comedians is that the majority of the young people in the audience out there don’t have the wide range of references.
I can do anything I want, I’m eccentric!
If life were fair, Dan Quayle would be making a living asking ‘Do you want fries with that?’
Students who laugh more- learn more. Students who laugh more earn more.
I think it takes a long time, as you get older, to realize just how crazy the world is, just how ridiculous it all is.
When the target audience is American teenage kids, you can have problems. My generation prized really fine acting and writing. Sometimes you have to go back to the basic principles which underpin great visual comedy.
You have to create boundaries of space and then you have to create boundaries of time.
Filming is like a long air journey: there’s so much hanging around and boredom that they keep giving you food.
When you get to my age, and I’m 66 now, you realize that the world is a madhouse and that most people are operating in fantasy anyway. So once you realise that, it doesn’t bother you much.
On movies, I like to involve the cast in the writing of the script. I like to have a rehearsal period, after which I do the last draft, which gives me a chance to incorporate anything the actors have come up with during the rehearsal period, so I’m very inclusive as a writer.