Rory Bremner

Anyone who wants to promote a car or a football tournament turns to opera. There's a much greater public connection than the image of plush corporate boxes would suggest.

I can't look at John Prescott without thinking of Les Dawson, and Robin Cook is a caricature of himself.

I think if there is a God, it's very important that he has a sense of humour - otherwise, you are in for a very miserable afterlife.

I had this wild imagination. I was never me. All my childhood photos, I'm in fancy dress, playing a Russian refuge or Marvelous Mad Madam Mim.

Exeter was, I suspect, more crucial in my life than in the lives of most members of my class, and conceivably, than in the lives of almost anyone else who ever attended the school.

I owe a great deal to Harold Hobson, doyen drama critic of the 'U.K. Sunday Times,' who championed me as Shakespeare's Richard II at the 1969 Edinburgh Festival.