When I had just started 'Cheers,' my nerves were ajangle, to put it mildly. I was absolutely terrified. What you're learning is to not show the fear, and to ultimately overcome it so that the level of relaxation is commensurate with the level of tension.

Even though there's an entertainment value to the film, I think it's very important because you can't really separate the impact of that political message from it. It's rare that you get films like that I think; that really have an important message and are also entertaining.

You know, I was on 'Cheers' for eight years, and I couldn't get another job, and I thought, 'I'm going to be Woody Boyd forever.' Which is not bad, but I really thought I was capable of more.

Well for six years during Cheers I couldn't get another job.

Inauthenticity is endemic in American politics today. The political backrooms where I spent much of my career were just as benighted as my personal life, equally crowded with shadowy strangers and compromises, truths I hoped to deny. I lived not in one closet but in many.

America must be the teacher of democracy, not the advertiser of the consumer society. It is unrealistic for the rest of the world to reach the American living standard.

The '50s in general are written off as a boring decade following the turmoil of the Second World War and its immediate aftermath - the postwar Labour government, the cold war, the arrival of the New Look in fashion, etc. But I remember it as a very exciting time - a pioneering, rule-breaking time, especially for the young.

So you can say, 'Get Big Government out of here, and don't tell me what to eat,' but when kids are going to school, and they're being fed junk, we're pretty much telling them what to eat, and we're telling them junk is OK.