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.
We seem to have lost our British sense of humour. It's a great shame. We have to be so careful nowadays; we have lost a lot of humour because people are too frightened of getting too near touchy subjects.
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.
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.
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.
John Sullivan's scripts were always very funny, and cast and crew got on well.
