I've never really understood that. It's a funny thing people sometimes accuse us of condescending to our characters somehow-that to me is kind of inexplicable.

I think things are funny when the character is taking it totally seriously.

It's a funny show. The characters are surprisingly likable given how ugly they are. We've got this huge cast of characters that we can move around. And over the last few seasons we've explored some of the secondary characters' personal lives a bit more.

It used to be that you had to make female TV characters perfect so no one would be offended by your 'portrayal' of women. Even when I started out on 'The Office' eight years ago we could write our male characters funny and flawed but not the women. And now thankfully it's completely different.

When I was a little kid I wrote this play about all these characters living in a haunted house. There was a witch who lived there and a mummy. When they were all hassling him this guy who bought the house - I can't believe I remember this - he said to them 'Who's paying the mortgage on this haunted house?' I thought that was really funny.

India-Seychelles relations have been characterized by close friendship understanding and cooperation.

I think romance is friendship and attraction sort of meeting together and that does influence what I'm writing a lot. I try to establish the attraction obviously but I also think it's important to show the characters having actual conversations about things other than their feelings for each other - and to develop their friendship on the page.

006 was such an interesting character and the film really explored his friendship with Bond and how it all went wrong so it was a very personal journey for both characters.

Friendship is held to be the severest test of character.

When you choose your friends don't be short-changed by choosing personality over character.