I can do anything I want, I'm eccentric! - John Cleese

The other person at the Frost Report table to whom I was drawn was one Marty Feldman. I hasten to add that my interest in him was platonic: in fact when I first met him, I was rather shocked by his physical appearance. Dressed only in black, heavily suntanned and very fit, he looked like an Armani gargoyle. This was the script editor?

So if I may give a word of advice to any young writer who, despite the odds, wants to take a shot at being funny, it is this: Steal. Steal an idea that you know is good, and try to reproduce it in a setting that you know and understand. It will become sufficiently different from the original because you are writing it, and by basing it on something good, you will be learning some of the rules of good writing as you go along. Great artists may merely be “influenced by” other artists, but comics “steal” and then conceal their loot.

The problem was that I carried around with me a tendency to feel that other people’s respect for me would vanish if what I did was second rate. And while I accept that this “perfectionism” is likely to stimulate the production of better work, it doesn’t, unfortunately, go hand in hand with a relaxed and happy attitude to life.