The thing I'd really like to see is the old London Bridge, with all the old buildings around it like Shakespeare's Globe. I'd like to walk along that. Don't worry, I won't get drunk and fall in.

I liked the idea of all of humanity fitting inside a sugar cube because more than 99.9% of matter is space.

There's a lot to do when you're a kid - spiders to catch, girls to poke in the eye - stuff to be getting on with.

I'm quite a curious person. I don't mind being the one who doesn't know things, a role I often play in QI.

But when it really happens I'm very fascinated, I'm waiting for the moment, because the moment where life abandons you and death steps in, that moment must be fantastic, no?

Ever since childhood, when I found out that the ultimate fate for all humans was death, sheer terror and morbid curiosity had been fighting for supremacy in my mind.

My father was an atheist, absent. He was a salesman; I was four years old when he told me that the end of life was death.

Nothing is more sad than the death of an illusion.