Robert Webb

“The only thing I've cooked while entertaining is stir-fry.”

“Mum was an amazing parent and my best pal. The tragedy of it, really, was that she died from breast cancer just as I was becoming a man, aged 17, and we were just starting to speak as adults. She was snatched away, and it felt cruel. She made me laugh.”

“He likes 'Confetti,' and he doesn't like 'Star Wars.' I think that just relieves us from the burden of ever having to take Mark Kermode seriously again.”

“I'm feeling around for what happens in a post-'Peep Show' world.”

“I don't really have that much contact with Americans. I mean, I see the oddest things on the Internet, I suppose. And I've got a couple of American friends, but they are Anglophiles anyway because they've decided to come live here.”

“When I present those clip shows and movie mistakes and things, the persona the writers adopt for me is unimpressed, superior, very sarcastic - I'm not any of that. I can do it, but that's not what I'm like.”

“I was an usher at the Lyric Theatre Hammersmith. You had to watch whatever play they had on 40 times.”

“Very bad things follow when we kid ourselves that we're naturally rational, rather than the more humbling truth: naturally emotional.”

“My childhood was as heavily gendered as any you would find in a working-class household in Lincolnshire.”

“The way people imagine their political leaders is, like it or not, an important factor in how they decide to vote and, indeed, whether they vote at all.”

“Don't get me wrong - intellectual snobbery is vulgar and gauche.”

“I grew up in Lincolnshire, trying to get the daughters of farmers and policemen to like me. It didn't go well until I got to college where, suddenly, there were different sorts of humans.”

“I hate it when people use the word 'sorry' aggressively, as in, 'Sorry, but I hate you.' Sorry's an important word, and it shouldn't be abused.”

“I've been called funny. I assume my wife thinks I'm funny. But generally, if you bumped into me and said hello, I would say hello back, politely. And that would be it.”

“I can't imagine getting bored with comedy or thinking comedy is beneath us suddenly.”

“Ukippers are the kinds of fools who haven't noticed they're sleep-walking towards fascism. Many UKIP candidates are of the age when their parents fought in the Second World War.”

“When I look in the mirror, I see the ageing process at full pelt, the hairline in retreat, the bags under the eyes growing and darkening, that kind of thing. I suppose it would be easier if I weren't an actor, but I am fairly philosophical about it.”

“A waiter at the hotel kept telling me that Cape Town is just like a European city, but it's not like that at all. It doesn't feel safe, and I didn't really go out at night.”

“No, feminism isn't 'over.' We need it not only to challenge injustice but because the whole gender expectations thing is bad for men, too.”

“I'm the guy who spends 15 minutes staring out of the window wondering what to have for lunch.”