Quotes from Alexander Armstrong

I would slap a tax on plastic to encourage people to use more biodegradable things. I would also like teachers, vicars and other community workers to be paid as much as lawyers.

I have four boys aged 10 and under. Fatherhood is lovely but there is this slightly shocking moment when you realise it is not something you just wear and take off.

I've always been a keen waker-upper. I very quickly get bored just lying in bed.

I'm the youngest of three children. We lived beside a big beech wood, on the edge of the moors, in Northumberland, which was enormously good fun.

I ended up at Durham School, which was lovely, then Trinity College Cambridge.

At Classic FM we're not an exposed shoreline where anything might come in on the tide. We're a lagoon; it's safe. You can tune in late at night and know it won't be contemporary.

I do love a good atmospheric soundtrack, me.

The BBC is a brilliant, infuriating, delightful cornerstone of our culture but it drives me round the twist. I will never forgive them for selling off BBC Centre. It's probably the best studio facility in Europe, possibly the world, and it's being sold off for flats and a luxury hotel.

I always think that in nearly every instance things that turn ugly, they almost invariably do so because of a misunderstanding, or because of poor communication.

The problem is you have people who are keenly aware of what their time span is. Governments work towards the next election; BBC governors work for their time there. You have extraordinary regimes that run at the BBC and different people have different outlooks.

I don't know about scared, but 'Chernobyl' definitely made me deeply uncomfortable. Almost addictively uncomfortable: don't know what that says about me. But I came to love the tatty Soviet brutalism of it.

Sherlock' is brilliant television. It has completely reinvented British drama, and upped the stakes for home-grown shows.

The minute you watch your voice back with its proper animated character saying the words, that's when you learn exactly what you need to do next time.

I was going to say that Mark Gattis is an unsung TV hero - but he's beginning to be sung like he should be.

My parents were relaxed, but very strict on manners. They encouraged us to follow our instincts and desires, so they were quite bohemian in that sense, but we had to work hard and that included chores.

I've been to Venice, Rome, and Dubrovnik, but none of them come close to Edinburgh.

The nearest village was a place called Pauperhaugh which was a village in the sense that it had a phone box and a bridge. By the time I got down south I had decades to catch up on. We only got colour television in 1978.