- The Likely Lads has lasted because the characters struck reality. People could identify with them. Mothers could identify with sons, and sons could identify with themselves. The series works so well because there's an underlying truth about it all. That's why classics are classics. When you watch Laurel and Hardy, there's a fundamental truth about them, a believability which I never find with Chaplin. In the same way, you can believe in Bob and Terry.
- One should be judged not by what one is, but by what one does. Also, the media encourage the notion that you are like your parts. Does that mean that you can't play Macbeth unless you go out and murder someone, or that you can only play Hamlet if you don't like your mother? It's just acting.
- I'm having some new track rods fitted on my car. I don't want to know anything about the man who's doing it. Why should he want to know about me?
- In this business, you do one job and then move on. You wipe everything else out - you have to. You can't live in the past.
- [on Rodney Bewes] There was no fall-out at all, as far as I was concerned. We worked together very happily and very well, enjoyed each other's company and when we finished, we finished. This is what happens in acting. You work with people, you get to know them, you like them, we have a great time and the job finishes and you go off and it all starts again with other people and you can't keep contact with everybody that you know. I think that Rodney wanted to do some more Likely Lads and I never did, I felt that what we had done was to me so perfect and so right that to try and bring it back ... After we finished it the writers went on to do Porridge and Auf Wiedersehen, Pet and then they went off to America and the success of that series lay in the strength of those scripts. There was some suggestion that we had other writers come in and I just thought 'well, I don't think it will work' and so I didn't want to do it, I was busy doing other things. I just remember him with great warmth and with great happiness and the time we had when we actually did the shows, that's the greatest memory of all. It's been quite a depressing week for me because another actor that I worked with a lot, Keith Barron, died as well recently and I've been thinking 'Oh god, they're all going' and it is a bit depressing. All one thinks at a time like this is their families and my thoughts are with them and my sympathies and I just wish them well.
- [on allegations he had blocked repeats of "Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads"] How could I do that? I can't stop repeats. A, I get paid for them, which is very nice, and B, there's no way I could do that even if I'd wanted to.
- [on not getting along with co-star James Bolam] Just because one played great friends, it doesn't mean that you are great friends.
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