A lot of stand-up comedy guys when they get a little famous just give up their stand-up career and it cancels out the thing that set them apart.

Famous pivot stories are often failures but you don't need to fail before you pivot. All a pivot is is a change is strategy without a change in vision. Whenever entrepreneurs see a new way to achieve their vision - a way to be more successful - they have to remain nimble enough to take it.

I walk the streets take the train it's real simple. Some actors create their own mythology: 'Oh I'm so famous I can't go places because I created this mythology that I'm so famous I can't go places.'

I definitely wanted to be an actor. I didn't want to be on TV I didn't want to be famous I didn't want to be anyone in particular I just wanted to do it. I see young people now who look at magazines or American Idol and their goal is to have that lifestyle - to have good handbags or go out with cute guys from shows or whatever. But I definitely wanted to be an actor.

HBO is really famous for hiring good people and staying out of their way until they ask for help or need it. And that reputation is earned.

A lot of times on tour it's about 'OK where am I today? Wow I'm in Costa Rica. What is their famous dish?' And it's about trying the food and really experiencing it.

I don't know if this is the kind of retrospective analysis that people are fond of applying to their work or actions but it feels like I knew I was going to be famous and I knew that an element of that would be traumatic so that if I could make myself something big and otherworldly it would be a kind of defence.

There are people who appear in the magazines and I don't know who they are. I've never seen anything they've done and their careers are over already. They're famous for maybe 10 minutes. Real careers I think take a long time to unfold.

Fact is famous people say fame stinks because they love it so - like a secret restaurant or holiday island they don't want the hoi polloi to get their grubby paws on.

It wasn't glamorous in my day. In the regions reporters were seen as such low life that they didn't merit their name in the Radio Times. Now people are interested in being famous. I never gave it a thought.