“Both my parents developed dementia in their old age. Everyone I know whose parents had dementia feel that they didn't deal with it very well.”

“Time Team' is by definition very static. Once you're in that field and you've dug your trenches, that's it.”

“A naughty part of me thinks, how come Hugh Laurie, Stephen Fry and Tim McInnerny have all done really good parts in a film, whereas I've only ever done bits and bobs? Before I die, wouldn't it be nice to be the scheming old man in a movie?”

“Virtually all my conscious life I had been involved in theatre - I had been a child actor - but as a young man who had experienced the 1960s, British theatre seemed remote from my aspirations in life - theatre was still a posh thing, a middle-class thing, something for an elite.”