If you put down a list of jobs doctor lawyer janitor teacher or movie star everybody would pick the movie star. And why? So you could lie around the pool drink margaritas and send money to your parents. So that's what I did.

Ask everyone whether they're an actor or a doctor or a teacher or whatever is entitled to his or her opinion. But unfortunately because actors are in the public eye whether we want it or not sometimes our opinions carry more weight or influence than they deserve.

I wanted to be a doctor in sports medicine I was into sailing and all that sort of thing.

When I was 40 my doctor advised me that a man in his 40s shouldn't play tennis. I heeded his advice carefully and could hardly wait until I reached 50 to start again.

I don't know why people question the academic training of an athlete. Fifty percent of the doctors in this country graduated in the bottom half of their classes.

The most watched programme on the BBC after the news is probably 'Doctor Who.' What has happened is that science fiction has been subsumed into modern literature. There are grandparents out there who speak Klingon who are quite capable of holding down a job. No one would think twice now about a parallel universe.

The conscience of the world is so guilty that it always assumes that people who investigate heresies must be heretics just as if a doctor who studies leprosy must be a leper. Indeed it is only recently that science has been allowed to study anything without reproach.

In the traditional urban novel there is only survival or not. The suburban idea the conformist idea that agony can be seen to and cured by doctors or psychoanalysis or self-knowledge is nowhere to be found in the city. Talking is a way of life but it is not a cure. Same with religion.

I think people are by-and-large happy with the providers that they have got now. They treasure that doctor-patient relationship.

What we have now is doctors who are actually better technically at what they're doing in their specialty than 30 or 40 years ago but we lost the relationship when the doctor would look people in the eye and say 'I care about you. We can do this together.'