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If you have a sense of irony or humour, you're usually cut down, as you're usually distorted or misinterpreted. So it does lead to us being slightly more dour and staid and predictable than would otherwise be the case, which I personally find quite frustrating - because if you don't laugh occasionally in my job, you cry most of the time.

Many people think making a film about history... about war... about the Holocaust, it might be heavy, dramatic and traumatic. I don't see things like that... you can find irony everywhere. It's how I look at life.

There are elements of irony in my work, of course.

I think there's still an appetite among a certain audience to see intelligent movies that have real emotion in them.

We never dealt with satire or suggestive material. Although some of our films were broad parodies or burlesques of popular dramatic themes, there was no conscious attempt at being either sarcastic or offensive.

There is nothing far-fetched about disappointment as a subject for comedy. It's something we are all too familiar with.

You don't service a big, fun premise comedy and then shoot yourself in the foot with too much irony. You need the audience to invest in the fun and the warmth and generally care about the characters.