People tend to group together their favourite sitcoms and feel that they all took place in one spot named 'the past', but in fact all these sitcoms are spread over a long period of time, and all the terrible sitcoms that were on have been justifiably forgotten.
We're no good at holidays, the wife and I. We just don't have the knack. We had one good one, early on, but that was a fluke. Everything since then has been a nightmare.
I'm not very good in the mornings and often stay up late writing, so I get up at about 10am if I'm not on set for the day. I take our dog, Milo, for a walk before having a light breakfast and settling down to write.
Audience laughter, when it's deserved, acts as a sort of fairy dust that makes funny moments not just funny, but joyous.
Writing 'Father Ted' with Arthur Mathews was like being hooked up to a drip full of endorphins.
If you're a good writer, you don't have everybody shouting in every scene.
Facebook was just John the Baptist. Twitter is the real deal.
So I don't think that the default mode of aggressive interviewing is useful, because politicians just build a defence against it. In fact, they thrive on 'Today' because they know what's going to happen.
Basically if you're trying to write films in England you might as well decide to hide for two years. It's just meetings with people who don't really have any money but pretend they do.
If people can spot talent rather than the talent having to come to us, then I think you might find that the quality of stuff goes up.
With piracy, people think it's about getting stuff for free. It's not - it's about getting rid of the middleman that stands between you and your enjoyment of the film or music.
I get contacted daily by people in America saying is there any legal way to download 'The IT Crowd', but the whole mechanism is too rigid to allow for things like that.
Twitter is like - it's like I blinked into existence.
I go up to my office and sit down in front of my computer and turn on the internet and then I don't work - that's the end of work for the day.
I have to use all these programs that cut off the internet, force me to be bored, because being bored is an essential part of writing, and the internet has made it very hard to be bored.
The creative process requires a period of boredom, of being stuck. That's actually a very uncomfortable period that a lot of people mistake for writer's block, but it's actually just part one of a long process.
I love Larry David's take on things in 'Seinfeld', which is that you shouldn't try to help people because it'll always put you into new situations which are unpleasant.
Conflict is entertaining and it's the stuff of drama - or comedy - but too much conflict, or conflict that's at too high a pitch can get annoying.
I feel that shows like 'Ted' and 'The IT Crowd' are very much more enjoyable watching with friends around a telly.
You need to tune into a different way of being funny for kids. They're learning the rhythm of a joke.
