The moment seemed right to me for a full and, if possible, authoritative portrait of the life and character of the Prince of Wales.

That test should not be about ratings. What should weigh is the knowledge that a public broadcaster delivers programmes that matter.

I honestly believe that TV generally is obsessed with the ratings battle to the point of cutting its own throat.

The BBC produces wonderful programmes; it also produces a load of old rubbish.

It's absolutely fine to think of new ways of doing things, and I'm not just asking for the traditional reporter to look into our living rooms night after night.

I had no expectation that the Prince would offer me the unprecedented and unfettered access to the original and entirely untapped sources on which this biography is based.

I ought to rejoice in the fact that our principal rival has died, but I don't.

I was disappointed not to be able to interview Mr. Clinton. I met him two years ago. I was looking forward to talking with him about issues from Africa to terrorism.

Programme names have been changed, and we have Andrew Neil saying he won't be using long words.

The long, forensic interview really matters.

I fail to understand how you can justify a poll tax on the entire population, yet exclude a significant proportion of that population from programmes that this tax is paying for.

The moment seemed right to me for a full and, if possible, authoritative portrait of the life and character of the Prince of Wales.

Over the last two years, I have been able to comb through The Prince's archives. I have been free to read his journals, diaries and many thousands of the letters.

While I have corrected agreed factual errors, I have not been inhibited from writing what I felt to be the truth about The Prince of Wales.

I deplore the loss of arts on BBC One and Two.

You have to be damn certain you're putting something better in its place.

Not every programme dealing with issues of global significance has to be fronted by last week's winner of Have I Got News For You-but I suppose you might be wrong.

I'm not certain that the BBC can claim to be making a wide enough range of distinctive programmes to make the case convincingly.

The challenge is the culture. You have to have a vision for the BBC-it can't merely be that it's big and has a place in the market.

The BBC has the obligation to think big. And at the moment, that clarion call sounds an uncertain note to me.

At home in Devon, my wife Jessica does a huge proportion of the cooking - I do the basics. My timing is extremely good, particularly when it comes to vegetables, perhaps because in my work, timing is everything. I know exactly what fits into a minute when broadcasting, and I apply the same to carrots.

Food is about communal togetherness. Our family does sit at the table. I think it's a great tragedy if a family doesn't have a table, as there is such an atmosphere of good will and warmth when we have eight people sitting around it.

Food is important to me, but I wouldn't say that I'm a gourmet. I don't like tricksy food.

I have a great deal of joy in my life, and I'm very fortunate. That combination makes you aware of just how wonderful life can be on the one hand and how dreadful it can be for people on the other. You can't be happy in isolation.

I have to grit my teeth sometimes, knowing I am going to be written about. But I think it is my life, and I don't want to get people interested in debating it. But I do feel that if you are going to put yourself about as a public person on a television screen, there's a curiosity.

My two great treats in life are baked beans and vanilla ice-cream.

Travelling to make television programmes means I have some unusual food memories. In Pasto, Colombia, I was taken to a restaurant where I chose my meat for the evening from a cage of white rats. It tasted perfectly good - like rabbit.

In this watering-place I acted an heroic character, badly studied; and being a novice on such a stage, I forgot my part before a pair of lovely blue eyes.

I do like to embed a fictional character firmly in an occupation.

But even with a character like Cary who is relatively outlandish, at the end of the movie he's in a place where I wouldn't have expected him to be - taking on the responsibility of a woman who is pregnant and who used to be his best friend's wife.

Always, your work is the same: You have to tell a story, you have to make a character. It doesn't matter if there are thousands of dollars, millions behind it, or if there is nothing.

Each of us is meant to have a character all our own, to be what no other can exactly be, and do what no other can exactly do.

I liked Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, and that is the kind of character that I would like to have played. That would have been more in tune with who I really was.

It's the difficulty we had with Mr. Bean, actually, when it went from TV to film. You certainly discover that you need to explain more about a character.

In a lot of ways, the make-up was the character.

The more we study the Indian's character the more we appreciate the marked distinction between the civilized being and the real savage.

So many people have said that to me, that what they really like about Alex is what she brings out in Marissa, and what this situation brings out in her, a hint of happiness and another side to her character.

I've been on the show for six years and I don't even know what her history is. I sort of make things up in my mind, but I think it's hard for an audience to follow and invest in a character when they don't have the details.

It is not true that drink changes a man's character. It may reveal it more clearly.

Because I killed a guy in real life, and because my character kills a guy onstage, they said I could never do anything this great again. I resented that.

Well, I go to the theater today, and its curtain - there is no curtain in this play; the lights go down and go up - and we start. And I live this character for two hours. There are only two of us in the play. And It's a complete experience.

I just kind of understood it, and I threw my love for others and love for life into the character, and was having a blast. I loved playing Dharma. I loved it!

I think if you play a character that is fearless, then it's boring. I think that's what was so incredible about Harrison Ford, is that he always seemed like he was never going to survive it, he's always scared, and yet he always does survive it somehow.

If you look to lead, invest at least 40% of your time managing yourself - your ethics, character, principles, purpose, motivation, and conduct. Invest at least 30% managing those with authority over you, and 15% managing your peers.

Every character I play has to be the hero of his own story, the way we're all heroes of our own lives.

To be a character who feels a deep emotion, one must go into the memory's vault and mix in a sad memory from one's own life.

Character is power; it makes friends, draws patronage and support and opens the way to wealth, honor and happiness.

You have to understand the tone of the movie, because if it's supposed to be funny, it can be funny violent like the Home Alone stuff, but you have to really understand the tone of what you're doing and make the action work for that and for the character.

In Shakespearean tragedy the main source of the convulsion which produces suffering and death is never good: good contributes to this convulsion only from its tragic implication with its opposite in one and the same character.