Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Despite some of the stories that have gone around, I've never had a big, flouncey strop about how much I'm paid. Considering I have a pretty interesting life out of making telly, I'm really paid quite well for it. So I'm not complaining.
If your pal or neighbour is in the SNP, you're more likely to listen to them than if you just turn on the telly and see me or Alex. The growth of membership is building a politically engaged community base that hasn't been there in my lifetime.
I did four or five years in telly, and by the end of it was drained. I was a bit sick of myself. I didn't feel like an actor anymore. That sounds silly, but when you're doing a play you're using different muscles, and it blew all the cobwebs away.
With the likes of social media and outside influences - we're going to be on telly a lot more - I think it's important that you listen to the right people, whether it's your team-mates, your parents, or your coaches, and don't take too much to heart.
The swimmers ask me all the time 'is it going to be on telly more?' They want their families to watch them. Not every family can afford to go to Rio or Budapest. And it is nice for the clubs and coaches as well to see the people they have brought up.
People are used to seeing me with Sue but for Sue and me, the most important thing is always going to be our friendship. We were mates at university - very close mates - long before we did any telly. The work is like a nice little cherry on the cake.
Some people are instantly brilliant. The Kenneth Branaghs of this world are ready-formed actors at 23 - he has used his success in lots of different ways - but there are people out there for whom acting is: 'Ooh, I can get on the telly and be famous.'
I decided to build a studio in my house. We built it in my basement kitchen. I had the drummer up by the fish tank. I was in the toilet singing. The bass player was out by the shelves in the living room, and the guitarist was on the couch by the telly.
On telly, there's been a move towards entertainment - with some very high-powered, fast-moving dramas. Then we have the Internet, where we get our information but it's all in bite-size pieces. I think the documentary, as a form, actually speaks to what's missing.
I think if you've got a good idea it will stand out in one of the different mediums. For example, something might happen to me today and it could be something to talk about tomorrow on the radio, or I can write about it, or perhaps it will be best suited to telly.
I never thought I'd be one of those old hams who favours theatre over everything, but I'm getting that way. Telly and film seemed more fun when I was younger; turning left on planes and washing up in nice places. But there are things that you only learn in theatre.
For me, Christmas was always about presents. As a child, we each had an allotted place in the sitting room for the ceremonial unwrapping and mine was perched beside the telly on a Moroccan pouffe. We would watch our mum with bated breath as she divided up the gifts.
I get a lot of letters from people saying, 'How do I get into radio, how do I get into telly?' and I wish there was an answer, because there's no ladder. There are no parameters. You've just got to go in wherever you can, make the tea, and slowly make your way up the ladder.
I do look better on TV. In real life, I look scruffy and pale, and I get the worst kind of recognition... I get the 'Haven't we met somewhere before?' I suggest it might be because I'm on the telly, and they say, 'No, it's definitely not that. Wasn't it at so-and-so's party?'
A guy playing pool in a pub once said to me that they should put me on the telly. It went in one ear and out the other. But then I started thinking about it. I wondered how it all worked, did you have to be best mates with someone at the BBC who you went to uni with in Oxford?
I have had people come up to me in the street - one woman actually told me she hated my accent, she can't believe I'm on the telly and my accent is so annoying. I ended up laughing because I thought, 'this person doesn't know me but she felt she could come up and slate my accent.'
It's odd, because I used to see pictures, on telly or wherever, of what I now know to be Shaftesbury Avenue and I used to wonder what that amazing street with all the lights was. Well, now I know. I think when you get a wee taste of something, it maybe isn't what you thought it was.
People think I work a lot more than I do. I think because you're in people's living rooms every day they're like: 'Oh my God, you're always on the telly,' but it's like, 'Yeah but you always have to go to work every day nine till five whereas I finish at 12:30 P.M. and then I'm home.'
I want to go to Denmark and Scandinavia. We've been inundated with their telly recently, and I've never been to any of those countries. I really want to get to know the people. I quite fancy living there for a bit if I could take a month off. They just seem like upfront, friendly folk.
I don't really read a lot. I got a few Booker Prize books and some others and thought I'd try this but quite quickly I just stick them down. I do like some Stephen King books but with some of them I just put them down as well. But I'm like that with telly stuff as well and films or music.
I'm not slim. I'm a curvy girl: I've got thighs and a bum. I don't mind baring the fact that I've got a bit of cellulite because everybody has. I find it off-putting when everybody on telly is the same size or looks the same build. For me, it's important for people to watch someone normal.
I don't care where you went to school. There - have I made your day? No? All right, I'll go further: I also don't care what your dad did for a living or how your mum voted. Nor do I mind whether you ate your tea in front of the telly, dinner at the kitchen table, or supper in the dining room.
I first saw Walter Hill's second film, 'The Driver,' as a teenager, late at night on the BBC, quite possibly sitting too close to the telly. Given that this 1978 slice of neo-noir takes place almost entirely in the dark streets of a deserted downtown L.A., it's really a perfect midnight movie.
How many times have we seen reality celebrities fall from grace - often through no fault of their own - and then go on a show like 'Celebrity Big Brother' and say, 'I want to show the public a different side of me.' And I'm screaming at the telly going, 'This is not therapy. This is voyeurism!'
I was very small, about 3 or 4 I think, and just wanted to be the people on telly telling these wonderful stories. Obviously the idea grew and matured with me but I can't ever remember wanting to do anything else. I've just sort of taken it for granted all my life that that was what I would do.
I started writing sketches when I was 13. I liked Vic Reeves, Fry and Laurie, and Paul Merton, and I thought you could just send sketches to the BBC, and they'd go, 'Great. We'll put these on telly.' But I gradually realised that you either had to go to university and join a club, or do standup.
I think shows like 'Dancing on Ice,' 'X Factor' and 'Britain's Got Talent' make great telly, but I'd never want to be contestant. I'm far too insecure and competitive. Also, working in theatre, you're being judged all the time - and I'd rather not be told I'm awful in front of millions of people!
I just do what I gotta do and try to show people I can write some funny lyrics and play piano, and hopefully that'll make them dig further. I really believe in my form. That's why I haven't done a lot of telly, and I'm not a regular on any panel shows, and I'm not in a sitcom or all those things.
Even with the 'Top Boy' series with Ashley Walters... I've been talking like on the creative direction wave with Drake about the series. Making greatness with it. The whole style of what's going on in London, the sound, is real. It's an actual thing that actually happened. So it deserves to be on the telly.
I feel really lucky to have had 'War and Peace' as my first big telly job. I was playing this incredible character, and we were shooting in Catherine the Great's palace near St. Petersburg in the winter, when the river was frozen. It was a dream. I still can't believe it. I wanted to soak up every last minute.
When I talk about it, now people imagine I had an impoverished childhood, especially when I tell people we used to have to put coins in the side of the telly. But we were really happy. Mum never complained, there was always music playing in the house and we were always dancing around. It was a great childhood.
I slipped through every school I went to without leaving a trace. I was in no team; I was never a prefect. I was totally mediocre - well, I probably still am - but at places like Summer Fields and Eton, it's all about sport and doing your bit, and I always preferred to watch telly or read a book than run round a field.
I can go into New York and sell out a theatre, but I didn't have to fight my way to get there: I was already a made man from television. I sold out a theatre in London without any TV exposure, just word of mouth and being a good comic, and that was a much bigger sense of accomplishment than just being a guy from telly.
My grandparents lived with us. And I remember watching 'Doctor Who' with my granddad on his new telly. These were the days before remote controls but my granddad, being quite a resourceful sort of chap, had fashioned his own remote control - which was a length of bamboo pole with a bit of cork that he'd glued on the end.
Work wise, as a stunt woman, I enjoy telly - or TV - because - and, as an actor - I kind of enjoy the urgency of it. I enjoy the problem-solving that's happening. Right now, we don't have time to rehearse for hours. And, if something goes wrong, we don't have time to shoot something else for four days until we sort it out.
I get marriage proposals, maybe one a week. Women do flirt, yes. They just want someone from the telly. They come and talk to you, and I guess baking is more attractive, and so they feel they have something in common with me. But I'm just a man from Liverpool. I enjoy what I do, and if that gets people baking, then even better.
What's always got me is the fact that when people talked on the telly about Iraq, before Afghanistan kicked off, you'd get only these public-school-type army officers talking about what was going on out there. I kept thinking, 'Why don't we get the true voice of the squaddie? Why don't we hear from the lads on the battlefield?'
Part of what motivated my writing was anger. I was angry that the daily misery of doctors, nurses, and patients was being trivialised into soap opera. We were made to feel bad because we were not perfect like our television counterparts. We were resentful that our patients did not get better as quickly as they did on telly - or at all.
