ARTHUR SMITH

Give me the new thing and give it to me now. I don't want that old thing - I've seen it, heard it, bought it, slept with it, loved it, but now I'm bored with the old thing and I'm gagging for the new stuff.

When I was eight or nine, I wrote a new version of 'Peter Pan' for the school play. They didn't use it - I imagine it was unperformable - but as recompense for not doing my script, I was offered any role, and instinctively went for Captain Hook. I came on trying to be terrifying, but everyone laughed at me.

My sister-in-law believes that few narratives are so tightly constructed that you can't skip boring bits and still keep abreast of what's going on.

If you want to write something of length, however modern and radical, you must live the life of an elderly gentleman of the 1950s.

Only the pun remains. The pun, beloved of Shakespeare, children and tabloid headline-writers, is normally eschewed in the modern, sophisticated circles in which I move.

Sometimes it's good to do something that you've never done before, so yesterday, I went out to buy Elton John's new album.

An uninspiring canvas becomes a glamorous masterpiece when it is reattributed to a better-known artist.

I am 54 and age is slowly writing itself on my face.

Because comedy is cheap to put on: if you've got a play or an opera, there's a whole load of people and a set, but comedy is just one man or woman. And because TV has learned to love comics - there's so many more around now than when I started out.

Acting in a stage play is like working the evening shift in an office.

Sometimes it's bad to do something you've never done before.

After you've read a novel, you only retain a vague memory of its contents. You remember the atmosphere, the odd image or phrase or vivid cameo.

The moon puts on an elegant show, different every time in shape, colour and nuance.

Reading the play at home, however fulfilling, can never be the vivacious experience that Shakespeare intended.

I have a suspicion that a lot of artists are trying to get a laugh but, unlike stand-ups, they don't get an immediate response from their audience; a laugh is a rare thing in a gallery.

A savage review is much more entertaining for the reader than an admiring one; the little misanthrope in each of us relishes the rubbishing of someone else.

I'm an armchair kind of guy, especially when it's raining, which it always is and always will be.

It was Julie Burchill who decreed that, beyond a certain age, a man should not be seen in a leather jacket.

Comedy ages quicker than tragedy, to the extent that we can't know if the 10 commandments may originally have been 10 hilarious one-liners.

I see my large nose, like half an avocado. I broke it falling downstairs when I was six, and it now resembles a large blob of play-dough.

Theatricals can be irritating, but will provide a better night out than mobile phone salespeople.

It is London fashion week, and once again I haven't been invited to any shows. This is upsetting given my well-known love of fashion, or, as I think of it, playing with the dressing-up box.

Sky and clouds and trees and little figures relaxing in the perfect rural rhythm of their surroundings: these are the staples of a Gainsborough landscape.

I've been trekking the hills and lanes of the British countryside for nearly four decades now and I've come to associate my passion with overexcited poets rather than pampered painters.

Occasionally I find a travel book that is both illuminating and entertaining, where vivid writing and research replace self-indulgence and sloppy prose.