Do you have any favourite technical lines that you had to repeat quite often?

Oh, you mean little ones like, ‘Red alert!’ Or - ‘Take us out. Take us in.’ ‘Go to impulse.’ ‘Is that a temporal anomaly we’re approaching?’ ‘Slow down. Get out. Get up.’

‘Red alert!’ is, I think my trade mark expression.

It does sound cool, doesn’t it? Whenever there’s a fluency or a fluidity coming from someone else, it’s very foreignness is compelling. That’s why we love to listen to a lot of people from different countries sitting and having a drink, right? ‘What are they saying? Isn’t it marvellous?’ Well, to them it’s not marvellous, but to us it’s brand new.

And for these viewers who are hard core fans, it’s not brand new. So they’re watching how well you speak French, or Japanese, and they’re judging it, and as you gain in fluency I think they’re with you, they become more supportive. It’s almost like watching a sport.