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Bob Dylan's Chronicles, which I'm absolutely loving. He's got this writing style which, maybe I'm fooling myself, but I utterly believe is like him talking - kinda folksy, almost like a Jack Kerouac narrative. I'm also re-reading Birthday Letters. I'm not an enormous reader of poetry but it's one of the most stunning pieces I've ever read.

Is your mind an art gallery or a porn cinema?

Or a sewer. Anyone who is asked this question has to answer, if they're being honest, it's a porn cinema. Although as I've been with my wife for a long time now it's become a sort of art-house porn cinema. With tasteful sepia-tinted films running. There's nothing really squalid going on in there at the moment.

What are you currently listening to?

Maybe this is part of me getting old, or older, but I've started getting really into jazz. I've become one of those people who gets upset when people start talking in jazz clubs. I am beginning to understand it, you know, as a form.

How do you listen to it?

I just bought all the software upgrades and downloaded this Chet Baker CD and then I thought, this is really unsatisfying. I can't unwrap it, look at the cover sleeve, pore through all those ridiculous details, you know. I'm a bit sad like that.

What was your cultural passion at 14?

I have to be honest: masturbation was my only obsession. I think that's true of any 14-year-old. I don't think that I had any cultural life. See, guys when they're 14 are really very sad people. It's all about self-gratification.

Weren't you taken to the theatre by your parents [Maggie Smith and Robert Stephens]?

I'm sure I was but all I remember is this - frenetic blur! I'd love to say I was reading Yeats, but...

What would your ideal alternative job be?

A fantastic piano player. I have a friend who can go anywhere, sit down and play jazz, classical, whatever. To me that is a sort of magic, to be able to do that.

And the realistic alternative?

Collecting trolleys in Sainsbury's car park!

Which painting most corresponds with your vision of yourself?

This sounds a bit peculiar but it's a Lucian Freud painting and it's this guy who looks like he could have been a boxer. Very large chin, smaller cranium than chin. It's a distorted face, almost. With these tiny eyes. It's quite menacing, but also vulnerable. That's what I love about Freud. Other painters immortalise people but there's something mortal about what he paints.

Do you feel like that when you look in the mirror?

Well, er, yes. You see the faults. I'm definitely one of those people who thinks "urgh" instead of thinking, "Oh, I look so loooovely".

Do you like parties?

I loathe 'em. I rarely go to them. You just get by on chit chat, and I find that quite vapid. When I was young of course I used to love parties because I'd hopefully go and pull somebody. Or I'd show up and get completely plastered. But now I don't drink any more, and that brings its own problems because one finds there's almost a voyeuristic thing going on. If you stay at a party too long and people are getting plastered and saying things they really shouldn't be saying, you can remember it all the next day. That I find quite sinister.

What do you cling onto from childhood?

I think you never really shake your childhood. I still have the behaviour patterns. It shows a sort of lack of will to actually iron out the childish things. I get very impatient about things. If I make up my mind, I want it now. I've got a childish sense of humour. I'm incredibly scatological. Jokes about farts. It's pathetic. But it makes me laugh.

Are you cool?

Well. If I say, yes I am, I am patently uncool but if I say I am uncool I am obviously trying to be cool, which is deeply uncool. So that's a trick question.

You die and go to heaven. Who are you most looking forward to meeting, and what would you ask them?

I would love to meet Bill Shakespeare. Obviously the first question I'd ask would be, "What can I buy you?" and then I'd just say, "Be honest, what did you think of my Hamlet?"