I do think, with people in comedy, you can have your time, as it were, and then you don't realise that it might have gone. I hope it hasn't for me. I think what I do is, I just... I just try to plough my own furrow, in a way.
There's a difference between being a comic and a comedian. A comic is a guy who says funny things, and a comedian is a guy who says things funny, and he has a style and point of view that will last much longer.
I read "Pride and Prejudice" [by Jane Austen]. I was gobsmacked by it - it's so funny and so modern. Unbelievable. You don't expect funny to come through after 200 years - humor doesn't transcend decades, let alone centuries.
When you've been doing comedy for forty years, you really do know most of the jokes. And even if you don't know a specific joke, you can pretty much guess what it's going to be.
You're basically the same person forever so you find the same stuff funny forever. The Muppet Show spoke to me at 5 and it speaks to me in my late 30s in the same way.
With a play, you do it and it's gone. Films always date. Television drama always dates. Television comedy, for some reason, seems to go on.
If you keep yourself alive and current, funny is funny.
It's one thing to be funny in a tweet. It is another to be funny for an hour.
'Step Brothers 2' would have been fun, there's no doubt about it. Maybe someday. Does that idea age? I don't know. It all depends on how the movie ages.
'Hogan's Heroes' lasted longer than the war.
Classic comedy is classic comedy, and it will go on for years.
It's funny how comedy is, you look at people like French and Saunders, when they started out they were very alternative. A lot of those alternative comedians have ended up being mainstream, they know that longevity is about being mainstream.
Comediennes are the lucky ones, because if you're funny, you can be 125 years old and they will still accept you.
There is that stereotype of a nerd with the high pants and pocket protector and that kind of thing. That can sustain comedy for maybe a movie - hence the 'Revenge of the Nerds' franchise - but not for hopefully years on the air. It's a sight gag, not a story.
A tragedy can never suffer by delay: a comedy may, because the allusions or the manners represented in it maybe temporary.
It's nice to think people might be talking about it after they've seen it. With some comedies it's a bit 'wham bam thank you ma'am', and then you just go for a pizza.
When you watch some old sitcoms, however charming they are, they have often lost speed over the years. The speed of 'Fawlty Towers' has lasted the distance.
There's a theory with comedy that you shouldn't do anything that's too topical in your specials because people won't be able to watch them in five years. But I look at Trump in the same way I look at Mr. T. I can watch comedy jokes about Mr. T in the '80s and still understand what they're talking about.
The funny thing is, when I've gone through the relentless editing process, my editor and I are amazed the Mercy Watson books still make us laugh. The same jokes that made us laugh the first time around still make us laugh in the 16th rendition.
The real question is how do you stay funny in your 70s and 80s? And that's a real accomplishment, you know, the longevity.
A lot of the actresses who were around when I started, I don't know where they are. Comics stick around.
