I've never really understood people who climb socially by sucking up. It seems like the least efficient way to climb, and also the most psychologically debilitating.

My background is economics and maths. I think one of the reasons I studied humanities at all, or even went into journalism, is because, like, science and maths wasn't cool in England when I was growing up. No one ever talked to the engineering students at Oxford.

I've never understood people who play up the artifice of music.

Personally, as a print journalist, I always found the most interesting stories to be the ones hacks talked about in the bar after work.

Actually, the curious thing is that the more you become a subject of admiration or loathing, the more you're examined under a microscope, the distance seems to open up between who you really are and the portrayals that people impose on you.

As a print journalist, if you hear a rumour you try to stand it up and if you can't, the story dies. With a blog you can throw the rumour out there and ask for help. You can say: 'We don't know if this is true or not.'