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I did not want to put myself on the line, as an Australian playing Britain’s greatest comic actor. The fans of Sellers are obsessive, possessive – and aggressive. I did not want to risk their anger – or my own reputation.
On banks, I make no apology for attacking spivs and gamblers who did more harm to the British economy than Bob Crow could achieve in his wildest Trotskyite fantasies, while paying themselves outrageous bonuses underwritten by the taxpayer. There is much public anger about banks and it is well deserved.
Whether one agrees or disagrees with the tactics of the Occupy Wall Street movement, it’s easy to understand the inspiration for its anger as well as its impatience.
When you learn that a truth is a lie, anger follows.
Good satire comes from anger. It comes from a sense of injustice, that there are wrongs in the world that need to be fixed. And what better place to get that well of venom and outrage boiling than a newsroom, because you’re on the front lines.
People have said I’m the candidate of anger. Well, we have a right to be angry. We lost 3 million jobs. We lost our place as the moral leader of the world.
I think anger and laughter are very close to each other, when you think about it.
All improv turns into anger. All comedy improv basically turns into anger, because that’s all people know how to do when they’re improvising. If you notice shows that are improvising are generally people yelling at each other.
As the plane got closer to Miami, I had this terrible feeling he was dying. Maybe he was telling me that he was going. I felt anger, panic, despair and helplessness.
I guess because I had such a horrible life growing up, going from place to place not knowing what I was gonna do and ending up being homeless, there was a lot of pain and a lot of anger that was coming out through my guitar playing.