I don't watch 'The X Factor' any more. Why do I want to see someone say the same old thing - it's all they've ever dreamed about - then lose and burst into tears and go into neurosis? They just want to be famous - it doesn't matter how.
We seem to have lost our British sense of humour. It's a great shame. We have to be so careful nowadays; we have lost a lot of humour because people are too frightened of getting too near touchy subjects.
The Christmas of 1965 was a Yuletide with a difference at my parents' tiny terrace house in North London: it was the first time my family had been able to see me on television.
My mum, Olwen, was a bright and talkative woman who loved a gossip and a story and was given slightly to malapropisms. And she was Welsh, so, of course, she sang.
There are certain values that, in my opinion, television has lost - various moral lines. How far you go in, say, revealing what people get up to on reality TV, and also graphic violence and swearing - the taboo of various swear-words is no longer there. It's worrying.
John Sullivan's scripts were always very funny, and cast and crew got on well.
