“My grave will be called ‘Mount Cleese,’” says the actor, comedian and screenwriter, whose new book is “Creativity.”

What’s the last great book you read?

Iain McGilchrist’s “The Master and His Emissary.” The author taught English at Oxford, decided one should not try to explain poems, qualified as a doctor, then as a psychiatrist, and then worked at Johns Hopkins neuroimaging the brain. Starting with the fact that our two hemispheres are asymmetrical, he explores how this affects our minds in every way, and how the balance between our two hemispheres has been lost.

This book has, more than any others, explained things I have been puzzled by for decades, in particular the shortcomings of pure intellectualism.

Describe your ideal reading experience (when, where, what, how).

My ideal reading scenario is an armchair in a cool room. Outside, sunshine and a pool; inside, a herd of cats and an endless flow of elderberry cordial; and opposite me on the sofa, my wife, Fish, so that I can look at her now and again.

What kind of reader were you as a child? Which childhood books and authors stick with you most?

As a child I read mainly about animals and cricket. I’ve always had an intense, soppy relationship with furry creatures, so I consumed the Doctor Doolittle books, and Elleston Trevor’s “Deep Wood” and “Badger’s Moon,” and Kenneth Grahame’s “The Wind in the Willows” and Percy FitzPatrick’s “Jock of the Bushveld.”

Then in my teens I read adventure novels, probably to compensate for my lack of boldness. I loved Conan Doyle’s books about Brigadier Gerard, the Horatio Hornblower stories, Alexandre Dumas’s swashbucklers, Rafael Sabatini’s pirate romps, and John Buchan’s “The Thirty-Nine Steps” and “Greenmantle” and “The Three Hostages,” where muscular ex-public schoolboys could effortlessly disguise themselves as skinny Lascar carpet salesmen without any of the locals noticing anything “a bit rum.”

Finally, at about 16, Sherlock Holmes, Father Brown, Agatha Christie and, suddenly, books about humanism!

You’ve narrated audiobook versions of everything from Dante to Dr. Seuss. Does performing a work aloud change your perception of it?

I started in radio, and I have always loved the medium. I think it’s the minimality of the technology. Just the microphone and a non-squeaky chair. It’s all down to the scripts and the performance, with nobody coming to adjust the radio mic in your tie-knot, or picking lint off your own collar every other take. This makes it the most intimate medium, both for the listener and for the performer.

So, recording a book is the next best thing. The trouble is, I make it difficult for myself, because I believe (on no particularly good grounds) that I should not sound as though I’m reading! I should sound as though I’m telling a story to a friend.

This is much more demanding, because I need a greater familiarity with the words if I am to achieve real fluency.

So, I’m slow! The only time I achieved a quicker speed was reading my autobiography, because I’d written it myself, which nowadays is seldom the case with autobiographies — a fact I was told by people who should know.

The only disappointing thing about recording “So, Anyway…” was that everyone thought it was much funnier than the book. I guess my timing is better than the average reader is. And, certainly, than most British book critics. (The Daily Mail condemned my autobiography as self-absorbed, so I shall write the next volume about someone else.)

Which writers — novelists, playwrights, critics, journalists, poets — working today do you admire most?

When I started to list my favorite writers, I was surprised to discover they were all primarily playwrights. Michael Frayn for “Copenhagen,” “Noises Off,” “Alphabetical Order,” “Make and Break,” “Donkeys’ Years,” the movie “Clockwise” (!) and the novel “Towards the End of the Morning.” Alan Bennett, first for “Beyond the Fringe” (the funniest show I ever saw), “The History Boys,” “Habeas Corpus,” “The Habit of Art,” “Single Spies,” and on TV “On the Margin” and “Talking Heads.” And finally, Alan Ayckbourn for more than 70 fine comedies, especially “The Norman Conquests,” “Bedroom Farce,” “A Chorus of Disapproval” and “Absurd Person Singular.”

Why all playwrights? Perhaps because in my generation they were all much funnier than the novelists.

Who is your favorite fictional hero or heroine? Your favorite antihero or villain?

My favorite hero and villainess come from the same book, “Lucky Jim,” Kingsley Amis’s first novel. It’s the only truly funny book I’ve read, apart from “Three Men in a Boat,” which my father’s generation revered (unless they were from the upper middle class, who considered the book vulgar for producing such immoderate laughter).

Jim Dixon, a minor academic, is trapped by a pointless existence in a minor English “red-brick” university. He has to play by the rules, but his hatred of his existence and of the self-important, role-playing dummies who surround him is hilarious and touching, because Jim’s attitudes are absolutely justified, so we revel in his constant brick dropping, and his fine array of private nasty faces.

Jim is in a chaste, undefinable relationship with the dreadful Margaret Peel. She is the most infuriatingly manipulative woman in Western literature. Clingy, condescending, faux-sympathetic. Just as you want to strangle her, you hold back just in case you’re being unfair. Her weakness is her strength and she uses it ruthlessly.