Keith Allen

“I was brought up on stuffed hearts, cabbage and mashed potatoes. It's repulsive, when I look back - I used to go to the butchers to get Mum's sausages, and I would cut one off and squeeze the inside of it straight into my mouth. Insane!”

“I'd done performance art sporadically from about 1976 - very personal street things on my own. Acting seemed like a natural step from that. But I didn't really want to 'be' anything: presenter, comic, actor. I just wanted to perform.”

“All actors will tell you that baddies are where the money is because they stick in people's minds.”

“Without history we are nothing, so it's worth finding out something about it.”

“My whole life has been a holiday!”

“I always do things for myself and I don't care about what people think.”

“I would have loved to have been in Hong Kong, or China, in around the 18th century.”

“I've been on the edge of everything, like one of those characters at the side of a Brueghel painting with a warty nose. I've been very lucky - I lived through three of the most profoundly important musical revolutions of the 20th century: latterday rock and roll, punk and then the rave culture.”

“I only did the comedy thing because I just thought I could do it better than anyone else at the time. And I was right.”

“I'm a jack of all trades, master of none.”

“I started out in comedy gigging and scraping a living together, and eventually worked up to doing shows at the Comedy Store in London in 1979. That led on to me presenting a show in the early days of Channel 4 called 'Whatever You Want,' which had live music and sketches.”

“I was always a late developer - in every field.”

“People using a public platform to further their own personal agenda, I think that's immoral. You have no right to do that. Tony Blair is a great example of that.”

“It's much easier being a father to girls. Boys are just horrible. Then girls come into their own around 12 when they're nightmares too.”

“A performer, that's what I am, only I can perform in different areas.”

“I have a focused career plan, which is not to have a focused career plan.”

“If you're on a film set for 48 weeks of the year, you're nowhere near reality. You can't emote like a human being.”

“My childhood hero was Roy Rogers.”

“I've always maintained if you want to act you should get yourself a life first.”

“In the summer, 80 per cent of what I eat comes from my allotment. I grow everything from beetroots and leeks to apples and plums.”