In this business, you have to have what they call an idiotic determination to succeed.
— David Jason
When I was a lad, my parents and all their equivalents never lusted after other people's riches or success.
The ups and downs are part of what has made you.
If I want to go out to a restaurant with some friends, I'm more than happy that we go in under the radar, have a little evening on our own.
When you had just three and then four channels, I could always find something that was watchable because the standard of TV was much higher. In those days, they had so much more money to put into so many less programmes.
It's very nice to meet people who just get on, work hard, and don't have things handed to them.
One of the things I learned was that I really enjoyed stunt-car driving.
I'm a qualified Professional Association of Diving Instructors Divemaster.
After leaving school, I worked as an electrician before becoming an actor.
I shall act until I drop. I just want to keep doing it and making it fun.
I was a very shy sort of person, and by acting different characters, I could immerse myself and make them do what, perhaps, I wouldn't do.
I needed to be an actor more than anything.
That's humour - doing what funny people have done since comedy began without being edgy and pushing boundaries.
In 1977, while I was performing in a play in Cardiff, a friend introduced me to a striking redhead called Myfanwy Talog, famed for her appearances on Welsh television with the comedy duo Rees and Ronnie. We were instantly smitten and eventually moved in together, sharing 18 happy years.
I've met a lot of military men in my time. After they retire, they are still extremely game. They dress perfectly and have impeccable manners. They always end up as secretaries of golf clubs. I have great admiration for them.
I have no interest in Twitter or Twotter or Twatter. It would never occur to me to use it. People who Tweet during programmes are always asking, 'What happened then?' If you're bloody Twittering away all the time, you miss what is actually going on.
There are certain values that, in my opinion, television has lost - various moral lines. How far you go in, say, revealing what people get up to on reality TV, and also graphic violence and swearing - the taboo of various swear-words is no longer there. It's worrying.
My life has been in reverse. It wasn't fame, and it wasn't money, but I always wanted to succeed. The only way I could do that was to try with every job to be better than I was in the last one, and to learn.
We were taught fortitude by our parents, who had gone through the war. Being a child then was fun. We could go out and play in the street - there were few cars - and we felt very safe.
You can't make people enjoy what you're doing unless you're enjoying it yourself.
It seems to me that as soon as politicians get in, they become part of this club, and the rest of us, beneath them, are just ants running about. They become besotted with their position.
A show like the 'Only Fool and Horses' Christmas special got 24 million viewers, so practically everyone in the country was watching. But of course it's a different world now, with so many channels. And those kind of figures are really difficult to achieve.
We get the impression through film and TV that Americans are violent gangsters with guns or upper-middle-class people in romcoms. I really liked the people. They were really warm. They could have been Brits. I mean that in the nicest possible way.
The Christmas of 1965 was a Yuletide with a difference at my parents' tiny terrace house in North London: it was the first time my family had been able to see me on television.
I have a yellow labrador, Tuffy, and a little rescue dog, Bella, who is the boss.
The first series of 'Open All Hours' came and went without much fanfare because the BBC, in its almighty wisdom, put it out on BBC2, reasoning that it was 'a gentle comedy', better suited to the calms of the second channel than to the noisier, choppier waters of the first.
I started at the Incognito Theatre as an amateur.
I was not driven by fame and fortune.
Journalists are out to trap me with my underwear showing.
Being an actor is like being a monk: you have got to be dedicated.
My father, Arthur, was a fishmonger, first at Billingsgate market and later in Camden Town and Golders Green.
A lot of TV has moved away from family viewing. But with 'The Royal Bodyguard,' we have tried to make a show when no one will be worried about sitting there with their kids or their grandma.
My father used to say, 'What the hell are you listening to? Put that bloody rubbish off.' And it was The Beatles.
I would like 'Frost' to go on forever, but you don't want people in the press hammering you, saying you've outstayed your welcome or that it's not believable anymore.
When you're young, for God's sake, get out and try everything in terms of a career. Or go abroad, meet people.
On 'EastEnders' everyone's bitter, angry. Where are the wonderful characters that I lived with, who could find humour even in the lowest form of living?
I was very shy and had low self-esteem; the only way to stop yourself getting beaten up was to turn your hand to being an idiot. At the beginning, it was survival, and after that, it became second nature.
I'm an actor, and so of course I want to see TV companies making good dramas. I want that to be a priority.
I deliberately decided not to go on Twitter. I've read about how much stress it can cause. I don't think it's healthy.
Driving a Model T Ford was extremely difficult. The pedals are reversed from the way they are now. It's so crude, but that was the motorcar that started it all. It's an incredible part of history.
I was 25 when I'd told my parents that I was giving up steady work as an electrician to become an actor. They couldn't have been less enthusiastic if I'd proposed starting a commercial newt-breeding operation in the bathroom.
I can be intolerant.
Working on 'Open All Hours' had some unexpected perks, not least the attractions of the canteen at the BBC's rehearsal studios in West London.
When I made my first decision, come hell or high water, that I would try to be a professional actor, I was burnt. Emotionally, I was burnt.
John Sullivan's scripts were always very funny, and cast and crew got on well.
Comedy is a funny business, which you have to take seriously.
My mum, Olwen, was a bright and talkative woman who loved a gossip and a story and was given slightly to malapropisms. And she was Welsh, so, of course, she sang.
I'm a twin, but only I emerged live from the womb. The fact that I was originally one half of a duo gave rise to a theory, much propounded in newspaper profiles, that my life has been one desperate effort to compensate for that stillborn brother.
How do I feel about being called a national treasure? I think it's marvellous if that's people's opinion. But I'd rather have the money than the label.
While I'm hale and hearty, I've no thought in my mind to retire.
