[on Fred Ewanuick] Fred emanates a lovely kind of naive, truthful quality in his acting, that I think is attractive to watch. He is a very dedicated actor. He's not the kind of guy willing to take shortcuts. It's the kind of acting you can't see. He makes it look easy, but he's very honest, hard-working.

[on playing crotchety, perpetually annoyed old men] I don't see them as curmudgeons. They're realists. It's only natural that, as one gets older and becomes less hip to the popular world around you, the more you're inclined to curmudgeon-ness, or old-fartism as a defence. You see the world going on in ways you don't understand.

I often kidded, in TV terms, that I never got offered parts after I turned forty. I just got offered diseases. I was dying of something, or suffering from something. Suffering and dying.