It's a pragmatist's business, comedy. Start off with good intentions and references to the Pompidou Centre and you end up with boiled sweets and a pantomime cow.

How do we get a pantomime cow on set. Jeez, the rigours of satire.

I directed before I was even in television; I directed in the theatre for seven years, so that was my trade anyway. But in the UK, I've given up any hope of being considered a director.

But in the UK, I've given up any hope of being considered a director.

I don't think London has been given enough credit in a lot of the movies that we make here.

I never met Barbara Cartland. But now that I'm working on her life, I wish I had. I think there was a lot of pathos in it and I'm intrigued by her.

The funny thing is, London is an incredibly interesting city. It's very sexy and it's very different, with the Thames winding through it like a snake.

People and things would continue to exist in a world where I did not, and no one would ever think of me. And, if that was the case, then what was the point of existing in the first place?

When you are a child you are yourself and you know and see everything prophetically. And then suddenly something happens and you stop being yourself

A tendancy to melancholy...let it be observed, is a misfortune, not a fault.

continue to advance until you run out of ammunition. Then, dig in.

When you look at the world, the world isn't just one palette. It's a beautiful rainbow, and why not have someone to represent that rainbow?

I think of it all as a test. This is a moral examination that one has to pass... to stand up against such social evils.

I have often been asked what I wanted to prove by my photographs. The answer is, I don’t want to prove anything. They prove to me, and I am the one who gets the lesson.

I say, when you tell the truth, you never offend nobody, particularly if you do it with dignity.

Piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.

The idea of who my father is to me is very different than who he is to you, or to the rest of the world.