Quotes from Tony Robinson

It's not that I think every late 19th-century man with a beard who saw something shimmering in front of him was actually seeing his dead aunty. What I'm saying is: lighten up. This isn't weird stuff. It's interesting.

Ancient barrows get cleared away. Legislation is pretty much 19th century. Global warming means there is an awful lot of erosion, exposing new archaeology, there is not the funding around to deal with it.

As anyone who has watched Time Team will know, the context is all in archaeology.

Always plan, but never plan on your plans.

The confidence in my ability to be a performer, a steeliness about survival... I learnt all those things from my dad.

The great countercultural movement that we all know from the mid-1960s was epitomised by popular music. But within a few years another shift happened: the birth of alternative theatre.

If I go to posh parties, I hover by the kitchen so I can get as many nice canapes as possible.

My parents taught me practical things, about how important hard work, discipline and the necessity of managing your own money were. Their values were very much the values of the postwar middle class.

I love the Pembroke coastal path. Whenever I've been there, it's been sunny, but slightly bracing. So you're happy to keep walking, but you'll get a bit of a tan. The wildflowers and the insects are great and you'll occasionally see a small mammal.

A naughty part of me thinks, how come Hugh Laurie, Stephen Fry and Tim McInnerny have all done really good parts in a film, whereas I've only ever done bits and bobs? Before I die, wouldn't it be nice to be the scheming old man in a movie?

Digging sand is a bit like digging water. You take your trowel out and it all fills back up again, so there are a whole lot of different techniques that are required.

I think everyone is fairly fed up with mildly dysfunctional people being put under pressure and then behaving abysmally.

A lot of us saw Blackadder in terms of problem-solving - 'Did that work in that episode?' and so on. We were very picky.

I didn't have much of a formal education myself.

For a long time, the paranormal was a legitimate area of explanation for quite a lot of people.

I can't see much purpose in archaeology unless you can find out the narrative about that place, or even realise that nobody actually knows what the narrative was.

Most of us work so hard and live so hard. On the first day of the holiday I remain in work gear, it can take me some time to slow down and all that time I'm missing the serendipity of the wonderful things that are all around us.

I was about 40 when I got a glimmer of the wonders archaeology can offer, and I want kids to be able to have that for their whole lives, not just in middle-age.

The adrenaline of being somewhere no one has ever been before is, or at least not for thousands of years, is quite extraordinary and by and large that overwhelms the feeling of personal terror.

I am terrified of being pushed out of a plane at 10,000ft with my hands tied behind my back.

I was an only child. Both my parents came from working-class families in Hackney, east London.

A chap was digging a pond for his carp in the garden behind his terraced house in the small town of Raunds, when he unearthed remains of an Anglo-Saxon body. Because he'd seen 'Time Team', he knew exactly what to do with it - he cleaned it very respectfully and then called the local archaeologist, who called us in.

Intellectual and emotional curiosity is what I hope I've taught my children.

I don't know much, but nor do I have the intellectual straitjacket that a lot of people inevitably pick up at university.