I struggle quite a lot in rehearsals, partly because I'm shy, partly because I still don't really understand the work that actors and directors do. I love the magic at the end, but the getting there - the wrong turns that are necessary to make something work - I find slightly beguiling and worrying.

I'm a constant idiot in conversation - I always seem to sound either smug or stupid. Writing plays was a way of winning the conversation by controlling the conversation.

I'm going to feel intimidated whatever: that's just my natural state. So I may as well embrace intimidation.

It's not that I don't like other people - I do. I just don't like me.

I really do love working. There's no day where I don't want to write.

I was taken to court for trying to travel on a child ticket to Glastonbury '97. I was, and still am, 6 ft. 5.

Writing is one of those jobs that everyone has an opinion on. I don't think this is a bad thing.

I cook every night: it's part of the marriage pact.

At my school, when kids went into the army at 16, they didn't do it in a gung-ho, Tom Cruise, 'Born on the Fourth of July' way. They were generally - and I hope this doesn't offend them - the more vulnerable members of the class. They enlisted seeking family, and they didn't always find it.

I tended to be the nerdy kid - stood at the back, watching other people having fun - I wasn't always necessarily a big part of the fun myself.