Quotes

[on his character in The Young Ones (1982)] There's a lot of me in Neil, obviously.

I'm old enough to remember the very first episode of Doctor Who (1963) ever. I was very scared, I was quite young. They went back to the dawn of man as I remember it, to caveman and Neanderthals. And as it landed, that was the end of the episode. And I remember ... the first time the TV scared me. Patrick Troughton was my favourite 'cos he brought that sense of humour to it.

[on The Young Ones (1982)] There's only 12 episodes of it, that's what's extraordinary. 12 episodes and it seems to have had a long-term effect. And at the time I was in a show called Shine on Harvey Moon (1982), the Neil thing with a wig over the top of an RAF haircut. There was one night, very, very cold, one Friday night, and Shine on Harvey Moon (1982) had, I think, 17 million viewers, and The Young Ones (1982) was on the Thursday and had maybe one and half million viewers, and yet if I walked out in the street nobody recognises me from Harvey Moon and everybody still says "Neil".

It's been a bad year for the gods taking away funny people. Mel Smith, Roger Lloyd Pack, Sam Kelly, our very own Rik [Rik Mayall]. It's been so bad, in fact, that now, when I see a photo of a funny person come up on telly or in the news, my first reaction is to think, "Oh no, not him/her too." What's going on?