I grew up with a mother who, every time she saw something, would say, I'm going to look that up. And I've become that person - I've become the reference-book person.

Instant coffee is just old beans that have been cremated.

I think people love to be noticed, they love to feel included. A lot of people are flattered if you, you know, if you make jokes about them, or I think because it means they're known.

I love the TV show, and if you make a bad movie it means you've soiled it. Just like if we made an advert. We were offered so many times and I'd say, look, this is the good thing, and you can't compromise that, because then you compromise the integrity of the characters.

I'd much rather have sat there and just been a fly on the wall, instead of having to smile at people. I'd rather have been a waitress. Just gone round and stared at people.

I can remember the first face-lift show that came on. I rang up everyone - are you watching? I'm watching.

Me just being myself in public or on TV is the biggest nightmare in the world.

I remember when the first police scary video thing came out, and you thought, wow, ooh, look at this, come and look, come and look. And now it's on every channel.

It makes me a bit sad that, if anything, that people seem to want to go back to an old model of normality, and sitcoms seem to want to be about ordinary families and things that aren't very interesting. I just think it's a bit sad. It's a shame that life is still depicted in a very straight way.

Well, I would definitely give up performing... But I would still sit down in an office and pretend to write with Dawn, even if we never produced anything, because it's just hilarious. I would miss that.

No, sometimes we just have to take liberties because the idea was so good. I wish we'd just gone with the idea that Patsy had been a man. It would have been fantastic.

I think TV companies don't take as many risks any more, it's a bit more prescriptive. There are more channels but there seems to be actually less main network channel comedy. You can't offend people as easily, people take things very seriously now. I think that's down to social media though because people can have little tribes of offence.

The reason they keep it so tight is that no one liked them, so that without each other, actually, they couldn't exist. They support each other. They support their flaws and everything else.

Lacroix has been fantastic. He's very nice. He gets the joke, and I think that's a good thing.

People ask could I have written the show I wrote in 1990 now, and I don't think I could. I think it's much easier to offend people nowadays. People have grown quite sensitive, I think.