I wanted to be a doctor at one time. Fancied myself very strongly as a do-gooding type healer of the sick. But, of course, it's a long and expensive business and I didn't have the money or the brains to compensate for not having the money. I also wanted to be an actor. So there I was, out in civvy street again. Out of one mob and into another mob and the only difference was the shape of the uniform. But although there was nothing about me that was important I felt great personal happiness. I owned nothing yet the world belonged to me. Great days. Show less «

One thing that frightens me - when people ask me to explain my success. For once you've pinned down the formula, you're finished. After Harold, the junk man, had gone no one would take me seriously. In a movie I was in with Edward G. Robinson, Sammy Going South (1963), I was supposed to be a devil, and they just fell about with hilarity. I haven't tried villainy since. Show less «

I had met Galton and Simpson and told them how much I admired their work, and I really did, and I said to them if they ever felt I could work with them then ... well, I never envisaged in a thousand years going into light entertainment. I looked at what was on television and the only thing making any, I don't know, social comment was the Hancocks, the Eric Sykes, this kind of half hour comedy programme, you see. And ooh, I did envy them. Anyway, they remembered this conversation, clearly, and this thing about the rag and bone men thumped through the door. I read it, and immediately wired back - 'delicious, delighted, can't wait to work on it'. Show less «

I take marriage seriously but it's a bit of a burden to free enterprise. And if you don't want to get hot, stay out of the kitchen, I say. There is a sense in which every man is a bachelor, hugging his independence and never giving it up without further hankering for it. So you must be dead certain that marriage is going to provide some pretty hefty and permanent compensations. I don't believe in romantic love. That eternity bit. I think you feel it when you're about 13, then it wears away with the acne. But I've a great urge for strong temporary attachments. The trouble with women is they think in terms of centuries. I tend to look ahead just a couple of months. When I say 'forever,' I tend to mean 'till Christmas.' They think we're planning to go hand-in-hand for our pensions. Show less «

Television was what made it possible. I would never have been allowed to try to do comic acting if it hadn't been for television. That's what is crashing the barriers. (1969) Show less «

I like the part because the man I'm playing is a failure - and failures are often of more interest in life than successes. I think there's a bit of everyone in Harold. Most of us try to put on an act, often behave in a way that's foreign to us. Harold makes fumbling attempts to 'get culture' by reading or listening to highbrow records, by dragging his father to exclusive restaurants and foreign films. He doesn't really succeed in kidding anyone, and somehow his failure is complete and pathetic. Show less «

Success has meant that people listen to me a bit more. It's the money that does that. You look at two chaps in an office, one earning fifty quid and another thirty. It's the bloke on fifty nicker who's going to get listened to. Yes, I've developed quite a bit of admiration for the chaps on the top of the heap. They've got the power. There may be a lot of idiots up there, too, but their voice is louder than anyone else's. To some extent, money has bought me that sort of freedom. Show less «

Harold is not me, Harold only exists on paper.

I used to spend many a glorious hour in the dear old lovable Coronation Cinema in Wythenshawe. It was a dream palace. I was reared on those marvellous films of the thirties. I idolised all and everything and that's where the spark first flew off the forge, I suppose. (1967) Show less «

I would take job after job as the mood struck me. I built prefabs, stacked timber, made electric switches. I changed with the weather. When the sun came out I burst out with it. When it got cold I pulled a roof in over me somewhere and eventually I became a partner in a two-man car spraying business. I worked hard at this, because I was the half-boss. There was only me and this other fellow and there was money in it. I sprayed and sprayed and sprayed. I sprayed when the dawn came up, when night fell - and when there wasn't a single car around - I still sprayed. From this developed my colourful language, or at least my colourful language developed when the lease ran out. We were making a lot of money at the time. However, to wash away the spray I would occasionally toddle off to a pub or two. And there I met some of the real characters of the world. Pub musicians. And they were extremely valuable to me when my highly lucrative half-business folded because one of them suggested I had a go at the local drama company. They knew I was mad keen on acting. I just needed the right shove at the right time. Show less «