Unmissable show?
Game Of Thrones. I like TV when it grabs you by the throat and Game Of Thrones does that every single time. I'm a big fan of Zooey Deschanel in New Girl. Why she doesn't win every award for comedy going I have no idea. She's the Audrey Hepburn of our age.
Earliest TV memory?
I remember sitting down to watch Bill and Ben in the Flowerpot Men, as well as the inestimable Andy Pandy. I saw some online recently. How it managed to entrance a bunch of five-year-olds is beyond me, because a) it's incredibly dull and b) it's appallingly done. Just the very idea that my kids would have watched anything like that… they would have laughed at it.
I cried when…
I spent a lot of my free time when I was a student in the 80s protesting outside South Africa House. So when Nelson Mandela was released in 1990, I could barely see the screen for the tears. Recent events have brought that flooding back. There was something biblical about that moment. I remember at the time the Thatcher government being so mealy mouthed about him, so I really enjoyed watching the Tories crawling their way back on that argument. It's not very Mandela-esque to enjoy it: he would have said, "What's done is done". But for those of us of a less generous nature, which is frankly most of us, there's a lot of schadenfreude about that.
Bring back…
Why Don't You. Which was short for "Why Don't You Just Switch Off Your Television Set And Go And Do Something Less Boring Instead". It was a kids programme from the 70s about the fun things you could do without watching telly. I look at kids now and their addiction to screens – there is a life beyond that which they're missing. It would encourage them to do more things. The world would be a better place.
TV turn-off?
Simon Cowell. And Jeremy Clarkson. They remind me of school bullies. If we could sling them into Room 101 I'd be happy.
The Following returns Wednesday, 9pm, Sky Atlantic
