I have had an amazingly fortunate life. I'm a child from Yorkshire, which is sort of like Cleveland without the pretty bits.

I dish the dirt out, and I can take it. But why should my mother and children have to take it? In 20 years, I have taken any number of stories, most of which are not true, without a murmur of complaint. But some stories you have to draw the line and say No.

Ambition is a very dangerous thing because either you achieve it and your life ends prematurely, or you don't, in which case your life is a constant source of disappointment. You must never have ambition.

I like to be loved by my children, and I quite like the Guardian hating me.

There are many ways to tell if someone is a bit thick. You can sit them in a room and ask them to push various bits of plastic into a wooden box. Or you can ask them to describe a cloud. Or you can carefully measure the distance between their eyes, the height of their forehead or the length of their arm.

When I was 16, I wanted to look like Lord Byron. It's not really a haircut so much as a hair-not-cut, but I've never changed it. It's a bit Byron, a bit Don Juan DeMarco and other things that I aspire to be.