Harold Prince went to see it and he wrote me a letter saying don’t be discouraged about this because actually there’s some quite good songs in here. But he also said something which stayed with me all my life, which is that you can’t listen to a musical if you can’t look at it, by which he was actually saying that the designs for Jeeves were absolutely hideous.

In life you can do whatever you want as long as you don’t complain when you pick up the bill.

You know what? Eddie was probably the best leader by example and not so much by words. You know, sometimes if he said something, you know, then you had to stand up and listen to it, but for the most part, he taught me the importance of being there every single day.

It goes back to that music teacher when I was 12 years old. After the third lesson, I was singing some popular country song of the day. I forget the name. I think it was a Hank Williams, no, it was too early for Hank Williams, I guess. Whatever the song was, I didn’t sing it like the artist had sung it on the radio. And she said, “You’re a song stylist.” She said, “Always do it your way.” And from the age of 12, I didn’t forget that.

When I became a professional actor I was fortunate to be given my first job there by a director called Jonathan Petherbridge.…He instilled in me a way of thinking about acting, which was about as far away from it being a vain occupation as possible, in that drama has significant possibilities for change in society, however small.

I’m passionate about all the stories we’re developing, but the one I’m most excited about right now is Animal Farm. I’ve wanted to make a performance capture adaptation of this book for a long time now, and it’s so exciting to see this become a reality.

It begins with knowing the story you want to tell. There are thousands of stories contained within the world that Samantha has created – we have to be very disciplined about opening up the world in a way that will lead us on to further investigation in the rest of the series. We need to find the emotional heart of the story; the relationships; the tension; the suspense and the drive; and of course working closely with Samantha is going to make it much easier.

During the ’80s, when I was in college, on the American side, it was Robert DeNiro in Taxi Driver, Robert Duvall and Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now, Christopher Walken, John Savage, John Cazale, etc. All of those guys – I was blown away by the emotional impact and sincerity of their performances. And then of course, in the UK, I was going to a lot of theater at the time and watching great on stage performances from people like Jonathan Price, Albert Finney, Anthony Hopkins – all of whom really influenced me as well.

I just thought I was going to go into graphics and painting, which is what I wanted to do.

To see a united Labour party.