29 Quotes by John Nettles

You need someone to ground you because if you start believing that your public persona is your only and real persona, then you're looking at a very long and lonely old age.

Actors have become much more savvy about the nature of television celebrity these days. We were not. The kind of celebrity culture that exists now didn't exist in the 1980s.

I don't know why 'Midsomer Murders' is so popular; I've asked this many times and I've asked the Germans particularly because I've become very fond of them, to be honest. And they say it's the irony, the sense of humour and so on.

I mean, dear old 'Bergerac', or dear young 'Bergerac' as he was then, he had a gammy leg, he was going through a nasty divorce with his wife, he was a recovering alcoholic, it's a wonder he can get up in the morning let alone solve any crimes. And he also had to drive that ridiculous car.

Midsomer' is a throwback to the old detective tradition, in which everything happens in the head of one man. Everything depends on his intuition and experience.

Midsomer Murders' is more about character and atmosphere. It portrays a kind of idealised rural England, just as the French like to imagine it.

The whole of Cornwall has become antiseptic. When I was growing up in St. Austell, the county was wonderfully rough and workish. These days it is polite and Disney-fied.

I'm flattered to be called a sex symbol and, on occasion - if I've had a nice bottle of Beaujolais - I can imagine myself really being one.

But, in real life, I'm not a sex symbol. I'm popular with female viewers, but television is fantasy land. People watching don't see the real person; they see a romanticised image.