No, sometimes we just have to take liberties because the idea was so good. I wish we'd just gone with the idea that Patsy had been a man. It would have been fantastic.

I'd much rather have sat there and just been a fly on the wall, instead of having to smile at people. I'd rather have been a waitress. Just gone round and stared at people.

The reason they keep it so tight is that no one liked them, so that without each other, actually, they couldn't exist. They support each other. They support their flaws and everything else.

I love the TV show, and if you make a bad movie it means you've soiled it. Just like if we made an advert. We were offered so many times and I'd say, look, this is the good thing, and you can't compromise that, because then you compromise the integrity of the characters.

But I think our humour is exactly the same today. Only, we've made rules now. We've said we are not going to do prosthetic make-up scenes, because when they take it off half your face comes off.

They have become part of us in that if we get dressed up as them, we don't actually have to have a script. You can just become them. You just become nervy.

You get crushes on people. You have to see them every day in that week. They're a fantastic person, and it could be a man or a woman.

Men would find it much harder because men have such odd personal relationships with each other. They don't really emotionally connect, whereas women do. I think women become very close.

I remember when the first police scary video thing came out, and you thought, wow, ooh, look at this, come and look, come and look. And now it's on every channel.

There were a lot of areas we didn't cover that I'm hoping to cover if we do some specials. One is to see more of Patsy's home and her home life, which is just the saddest thing.

Lacroix has been fantastic. He's very nice. He gets the joke, and I think that's a good thing.

No, sometimes we just have to take liberties because the idea was so good. I wish we'd just gone with the idea that Patsy had been a man. It would have been fantastic.

Well, I'm lucky because, you see, I'll probably bounce back from this role.

I grew up with a mother who, every time she saw something, would say, I'm going to look that up. And I've become that person - I've become the reference-book person.

Well, I would definitely give up performing... But I would still sit down in an office and pretend to write with Dawn, even if we never produced anything, because it's just hilarious. I would miss that.

We were watching the first series recently, and it has a charm, a kind of amateur charm. At that point we didn't involve ourselves technically at all - we just messed about and told our jokes - and it looks a bit like that.

I can remember the first face-lift show that came on. I rang up everyone - are you watching? I'm watching.

We had this party in New York, and there were a lot of gay men there dressed up as the characters. I showed up just looking like myself, but it was a real case of shame. They looked so fantastic. We could never quite live up to it.

At home, I relax by gardening, or just pottering.

Commissioners are obsessed with young people, which is funny because they don't watch telly - only old people do.

I always swore I would never write a book. But I read Clare Balding's and it was really interesting and so prettily written and lovely and not too revealing. I went to her book launch and met her editor who said 'why don't you think about it? You can do it however you want, based on your characters or you.'

I cannot do confrontation. You know that fight or flight thing? I'm flight. I just don't want the argument.

I did grieve a bit when I wasn't having the chemo anymore. I was used to sitting in the little chair and then the nurse would come and do it. It was like that was your job for that long and it was reassuring.

I haven't got time in my life to do all the things I should be doing, like running and dieting and decorating my house, buying some furniture.

I recommend a little dose of cancer to anyone.

I think it is a bit harder for women starting in comedy.

I think people imagine that your fame somehow sort of equates with how much you get paid.

I think when Madonna did sexy stuff, she looked more in control. And I think it looked more like she was breaking boundaries. Today, it feels like it's pandering to everything that's wrong, and I don't think it's nice, especially for young girls.

I used to take someone with me for the chemotherapy so I could do jokes. You always try and find something absurd.

I'm a total petrolhead. My three brothers and I used to ride scrambling bikes in the field near where we lived. We all liked cars. I've always loved the smell of an engine.

I'm a walkawayer. If someone brings me a really crap meal in a restaurant I will tell them it's wonderful and then just never go to the restaurant again. I think that's the best way to do it generally, rather than sit and fight and annoy your head. Just pretend to enjoy it and then leave.

Like all girls, when I was growing up, I always worried about this bit of me being too fat or that bit. But I look back at pictures of me when I was young, and I was thin and gorgeous.

Me just being myself in public or on TV is the biggest nightmare in the world.

My daughters related to something in the Spice Girls that made them feel better about being female. They truly started to believe girls could do anything. They could be fat, thin, anything they wanted to be.

My job gives me the attention I'd otherwise crave.

The truth is, you can be honest with your friends - but you just can't be honest with the general public if you want to keep your friends.

When I was a child, a lot of my time was spent in Scotland because my mother's Scottish, and we used to go up to Ayrshire and visit relations in a place called Dalry.

You get crushes on people. You have to see them every day in that week. Theyre a fantastic person and it could be a man or a woman.

I became hooked on the idea of being able to shoot an image and process it myself, and end up with a product.

After I'd produced about two dozen pen and ink drawings, one evening I decided that they needed poems to accompany them. I still have no idea where that notion came from, but it took me about two hours to produce verses for these creatures.

Yeah, that's what kind of, we get the idea a little bit yeah, because other people from different countries also try as hard as they can to get a medal or a gold medal in the Olympic Games. And you know, if they can work hard, we can work hard as well.

What's fascinating is that when you write a script, it's almost a stream of consciousness. You have an idea that it means something, but you're not always sure what. Then when you get on the set, the actors teach you.

I also do not like the idea of soft money, these issue ads - people don't know where the money is coming from, millions and millions of dollars outside of the control of a candidate - there's no accountability.

From the beginning, the series has been story driven - I began with a story idea - but research feeds it.

Then I decided I couldn't just crawl in the corner and die, so I started putting pen to paper and wrote some songs. I had no idea what for or who I was going to work with. I tried to find my way and direction.

The idea is, if I can't heal from my art, then how can you heal?

There is sometimes a peculiar confusion in the West that equates progress to whatever is recent or whatever is new, and it is time we understood that progress has nothing to do with the chronology of an idea.

The idea of licking stamps seemed great fun for me.

Learn about the world, the way it works, any kind of science and anthropology, it's really an interesting place we live in. Evolution is a really fantastic idea, even more than the idea of God I think.