“Oh aye…my Father would thrash me every now and then. He’d talk while he did it too! He’d hit me and shout, ‘Have ye had enough?’ Had enough? Whit kind of question is that? ‘Why, Father, would another kick in the balls be out of the question???’”

I’d always been scared of people with tertiary education and high intellects in case they found me wanting. I thought they viewed me as just a welder who knew a few jokes.

Now, the country is in a terrible state, and you’ve blamed it on a number of things: Unemployment rate, the value of the pound and all that… wrll, it’s because the national anthem is boring.

My definition of an intellectual is someone who can listen to the William Tell Overture without thinking of the Lone Ranger.

I love Scotland and I speak about it a lot, so people think I’m desperate to go back. They just take it upon themselves to say I’m going back, but I’m not. I’d rather concentrate on becoming a citizen of the world.

When you involved in an accident and someone asks “are you alright?” Yes fine thanks, I’ll just pick up my limbs and be off.

I am totally, absolutely romantic. When I broke up with a girl I would listen to the most heart-breaking music and make it worse. That’s what girls do. I think I am a girl really.

Well, the film’s not only pricking the pomposity of the Church, it’s pricking the pomposity, and sometimes you would think fraudulence, of the insurance companies.

The human race has been set up. Someone, somewhere, is playing a practical joke on us. Apparently, women need to feel loved to have sex. Men need to have sex to feel loved. How do we ever get started.

The religion in Scotland is one of the most patronising things… after the weather.

I still do my comedy and my performance stuff and my acting so it’s not all-consuming. But I do find myself drawing more and more these days.

I think of my life as a series of moments and I’ve found that the great moments often don’t have too much to them.

I’m not going to throw away the hand of friendship to suit 100 Trotskyites in Glasgow.

I hate those earnest TV documentaries that are the world according to people with glasses who know better than you.

Behind the proscenium arch, you can’t always hear what people in the audience are saying.

Sometimes there’s a tackiness about Route 66 that out-tacks any tackiness I’ve ever seen anywhere else. And the Meramec Caverns are the pinnacle of that tack.

I set out to be a cross between Lenny Bruce and Robert the Bruce – my main thrust was the body and its functions and malfunctions – the absurdity of the thing.

It’s just a matter of hitting the ball where I want to hit it and hopefully making some putts.

I had no knowledge of the various steps involved in the game balls and the process that happened between when they were prepared and went to the officials and went to the game. So, I’ve learned a lot about that.

Most people don’t deserve to be spoken of in the same breath as Chaplin or Lucille Ball.

Everything I did that required effort, I opened my mouth. Even to catch a ball, I opened my mouth.

But the truth is that L.A. was never entirely real anyway, as Steely Dan, Randy Newman, Warren Zevon, Larry David and Alan Ball all understood.

The Croatians don’t play well without the ball.

Ball points belong to their age. They make everyone write alike.

I think of myself as ‘catching’ the ball with my bat and letting the pitcher supply the power.