Graham Linehan

“Twitter is like - it's like I blinked into existence.”

“The thing that changed everything for me was the Firefox browser. I was pretty bad when it came to computers - I didn't know how powerful the internet could be until I discovered tabbed browsing.”

“Father Ted' would be impossible to remake it in America. The whole situation of being Irish and being a priest in Ireland is so different than anything else in America.”

“There are producers, like the late Geoffrey Perkins, who have truly great ideas that will fire up your synapses and show you that handing in your first draft is not the end of a horrible process, but the beginning of a beautiful one.”

“So I don't think that the default mode of aggressive interviewing is useful, because politicians just build a defence against it. In fact, they thrive on 'Today' because they know what's going to happen.”

“Part of the job involves thinking about things and eliminating them. You spend a lot of time coming up with ideas that are terrible and hating them and hating yourself.”

“I have to use all these programs that cut off the internet, force me to be bored, because being bored is an essential part of writing, and the internet has made it very hard to be bored.”

“We're no good at holidays, the wife and I. We just don't have the knack. We had one good one, early on, but that was a fluke. Everything since then has been a nightmare.”

“I go up to my office and sit down in front of my computer and turn on the internet and then I don't work - that's the end of work for the day.”

“I love Larry David's take on things in 'Seinfeld', which is that you shouldn't try to help people because it'll always put you into new situations which are unpleasant.”

“I like working with people who respect the intelligence of their audience.”

“You need to tune into a different way of being funny for kids. They're learning the rhythm of a joke.”

“I'm not very good in the mornings and often stay up late writing, so I get up at about 10am if I'm not on set for the day. I take our dog, Milo, for a walk before having a light breakfast and settling down to write.”

“If people can spot talent rather than the talent having to come to us, then I think you might find that the quality of stuff goes up.”

“I like shows where the female characters are as funny as the male characters, not just commenting on how funny the male characters are.”

“I get contacted daily by people in America saying is there any legal way to download 'The IT Crowd', but the whole mechanism is too rigid to allow for things like that.”

“I think all technology should be plug and play. I would say it's easier to set up a blog than it is to change channels on your telly.”

“With piracy, people think it's about getting stuff for free. It's not - it's about getting rid of the middleman that stands between you and your enjoyment of the film or music.”

“I'm a luddite in comparison with some of the people I follow on Twitter, but a nerd in comparison with many people. But I was always a nerd in other terms - always a big Dungeons & Dragons fan, stuff like that.”

“I used to be a film and music journalist, and wrote for different magazines in the 1990s. I still love music, but the experience destroyed my enthusiasm for film.”