I love deadlines. I like the whooshing noise they make as they go by.

I fell in love with Twitter. Fathers, lock up your deadlines.

Everybody knows the power of deadlines – and we all hate them. But their effectiveness is undeniable.

The ideal time for writing a [television] script is four days, though sometimes it has to be two or three days depending on the deadline. If it’s two days, sometimes there are things I see that don’t work as well. If I have two weeks, the scripts get kind of flabby and lack the adrenaline that a sense of deadline fills you with.

True enough, nature has endowed me with a fair measure of patience and composure, yet I should be lying if I told you that, having seen the reporter off on his way to make his deadline, I fell peacefully asleep.

I am a world expert on how to organise tasks in a senseless order, totally unrelated to priority, and thus create a massive panic leading up to an important deadline.