Stephen J. Cannell

Once you put something like 'The A-Team' on the map, it does become part of the DNA of television. People grab little pieces of it. I certainly grabbed little pieces of other people's shows when I was creating my shows.

Early in the 1990s, I flew alone in a dandelion-yellow, single-engine, 180-horsepower Piper Cherokee from Westchester County Airport in New York westward to the Rocky Mountains, landing and refuelling a good many times in middle-sized cities and towns along the way.

I was training in Gleason's Gym on 30th and 8th Avenue, where it was the Mecca of boxing, and a guy walked in who couldn't rub two quarters together and said, 'Did you ever think of being on TV?' And somehow I ended up in 'Taxi,' which is the craziest thing of all.