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I care more about telly because it made me an actor and there's a much more immediate response to TV. You can address the political or cultural fabric of your country.

I don't watch much telly, the telly hardly goes on, but the things I do watch are sort of nature programs, and something about the oceans and the amount of weird fish that's in there.

Some British actors are snobby about telly, and I don't understand that.

I don't watch a huge amount of telly. I read a lot. I'm reading at the moment 'Freedom,' by Jonathan Franzen, a great big brick of a book, and I'm loving it.

The power of telly is surprising. If you're in a six-part series, you're famous while it's on - people point in the street. Two weeks later it all goes back to normal.

I don't like 'cool telly.'

It gets slightly daunting if you're watching the telly and everybody's gorgeous. It's just so rubbish. And I'm grateful that it's not so much anymore - it's great to see.

Telly never has any smart, amusing intellectuals living on a council estate.

I did four or five years in telly, and by the end of it was drained. I was a bit sick of myself. I didn't feel like an actor anymore. That sounds silly, but when you're doing a play you're using different muscles, and it blew all the cobwebs away.

I am a chef who happens to appear on the telly, that's it.