I have no interest in Twitter or Twotter or Twatter. It would never occur to me to use it. People who Tweet during programmes are always asking, 'What happened then?' If you're bloody Twittering away all the time, you miss what is actually going on.

While I'm hale and hearty, I've no thought in my mind to retire.

I was 25 when I'd told my parents that I was giving up steady work as an electrician to become an actor. They couldn't have been less enthusiastic if I'd proposed starting a commercial newt-breeding operation in the bathroom.

I never thought I was academically gifted at school. But when I started flying, I found you didn't need an academic mind - you just needed determination and dedication.

A couple of years ago, I bought my own helicopter, a Robinson R44. I use it occasionally to fly myself to sets where I am filming or to business meetings.

In this business, you have to have what they call an idiotic determination to succeed.

My mum, Olwen, was a bright and talkative woman who loved a gossip and a story and was given slightly to malapropisms. And she was Welsh, so, of course, she sang.

I will continue to entertain the great British public. Because that is what I love doing.

You wouldn't want me to play Frost in a wheelchair, would you? 'Frost' is getting a little long in the tooth. I still enjoy doing it, and it's a great part, but I just think he's got to retire.

I'm a twin, but only I emerged live from the womb. The fact that I was originally one half of a duo gave rise to a theory, much propounded in newspaper profiles, that my life has been one desperate effort to compensate for that stillborn brother.

Being an actor is like being a monk: you have got to be dedicated.

I grew up in London, a city devastated by the bombing. I am, you might say, a Blitz Baby.

Journalists are out to trap me with my underwear showing.

That's humour - doing what funny people have done since comedy began without being edgy and pushing boundaries.

It seems to me that as soon as politicians get in, they become part of this club, and the rest of us, beneath them, are just ants running about. They become besotted with their position.

I needed to be an actor more than anything.

I always say it is not the arrival; it is the journey.

I started at the Incognito Theatre as an amateur.

Comedy is a funny business, which you have to take seriously.

How do I feel about being called a national treasure? I think it's marvellous if that's people's opinion. But I'd rather have the money than the label.

My father, Arthur, was a fishmonger, first at Billingsgate market and later in Camden Town and Golders Green.

I would like 'Frost' to go on forever, but you don't want people in the press hammering you, saying you've outstayed your welcome or that it's not believable anymore.

I have a yellow labrador, Tuffy, and a little rescue dog, Bella, who is the boss.

I've met a lot of military men in my time. After they retire, they are still extremely game. They dress perfectly and have impeccable manners. They always end up as secretaries of golf clubs. I have great admiration for them.

I can be intolerant.

For me, the making of a documentary to mark the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain was an intensely personal journey. I was born in February 1940, so I was just six months old as the battle raged overhead.

A lot of TV has moved away from family viewing. But with 'The Royal Bodyguard,' we have tried to make a show when no one will be worried about sitting there with their kids or their grandma.

I joined an amateur drama group as a teenager, fell in love with theatre, and it totally changed my life.

I was very shy and had low self-esteem; the only way to stop yourself getting beaten up was to turn your hand to being an idiot. At the beginning, it was survival, and after that, it became second nature.

There are certain values that, in my opinion, television has lost - various moral lines. How far you go in, say, revealing what people get up to on reality TV, and also graphic violence and swearing - the taboo of various swear-words is no longer there. It's worrying.

In 1977, while I was performing in a play in Cardiff, a friend introduced me to a striking redhead called Myfanwy Talog, famed for her appearances on Welsh television with the comedy duo Rees and Ronnie. We were instantly smitten and eventually moved in together, sharing 18 happy years.

My father used to say, 'What the hell are you listening to? Put that bloody rubbish off.' And it was The Beatles.

Working on 'Open All Hours' had some unexpected perks, not least the attractions of the canteen at the BBC's rehearsal studios in West London.

I want to encourage young people to get up off the sofa and get out there - as long as you want something hard enough, you can do it.

Some actors retire, and some don't.

We have more and more rules coming out of Europe telling us what to do, and I think people are getting a bit fed up with it. This was supposed to be a common market. I don't remember them ever saying we would be governed by Brussels and become a satellite of Europe.

People tend to feel that if you're a comedian, you can't act.

When I made my first decision, come hell or high water, that I would try to be a professional actor, I was burnt. Emotionally, I was burnt.

Classic comedy is classic comedy, and it will go on for years.

Driving a Model T Ford was extremely difficult. The pedals are reversed from the way they are now. It's so crude, but that was the motorcar that started it all. It's an incredible part of history.

My life has been in reverse. It wasn't fame, and it wasn't money, but I always wanted to succeed. The only way I could do that was to try with every job to be better than I was in the last one, and to learn.

When I was a lad, my parents and all their equivalents never lusted after other people's riches or success.

What intrigues me is that there are funny people in the real East End. It's famous for it. There'd be blokes dressing up as women as a lark, but 'EastEnders' seems blind to the fact that they enjoy a laugh. There should be a cheery chappy on there.

It's very nice to meet people who just get on, work hard, and don't have things handed to them.

Missing out on 'Monty Python' was a real blow at the time. I sometimes wonder how things would have been different if I had been invited to join 'Monty Python,' but as the saying goes, one door closes, another opens.

The ups and downs are part of what has made you.

Miley Cyrus epitomises what we have allowed. She has done it to break the mould. I can understand why, but we have given her the oxygen of publicity and encouraged it, so young girls will think it is the right way to attract men. We've lost our standards.

Don't get me started on BBC salaries. We were never the big league. Situation comedy has always been the poor relation in the television entertainment business.

On 'EastEnders' everyone's bitter, angry. Where are the wonderful characters that I lived with, who could find humour even in the lowest form of living?

When you had just three and then four channels, I could always find something that was watchable because the standard of TV was much higher. In those days, they had so much more money to put into so many less programmes.