Business gives you a massive high. Doing a great deal, coming up with an inspirational solution... It's very addictive. But it doesn't last long. In isolation, it's a bit sterile. It doesn't reward the soul.
I looked at longevity in show business when I was about 13, and the people who seemed to have longevity were the ones who'd spent quite a bit of time learning about what they were doing before they made it.
It may not be the most popular but there is a place for it. I think about the kind of music I love, acoustic, melodic, and I guess it kind of took a bit of courage on my part to think I could be one of those songwriters.
Comedy can always be taken the wrong way. If I do a bit that is meant to diffuse racism or sexism, I'm not going to avoid it on the chance that a small portion of the audience might take it the wrong way.
Playing and singing at the same time is pretty cool, but sometimes it's difficult to know when you can just really let go a bit because you've got to get back to bloody microphone and sing some stuff.
I think we all attract troublemakers; I don't think it's particularly about anyone. I had it actually as an album title, and I thought it would be really cool to write a song about a girl that's a bit of troublemaker.
Almost all the fans I meet are pretty cool people. They're intelligent and tend to think about things a bit more than your average rock'n'roll fans: sensible people I wouldn't mind having a drink with.
As I have said for many years throughout this land, we're borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the future of human civilization. Every bit of that has to change.
It took me so many years to move out. I'm definitely a bit of a Peter Pan, reluctant to grow up. It all seemed really nice at home-why change it? Part of me would prefer not to have any responsibility whatsoever.
Acting is not terribly important work, and I have always felt a bit of guilt about pursuing something that is so selfish. I love doing it, but it is never something that feels like it's going to change or save the world.
You can do something as simple as drinking two cups of water before a meal to fill your belly a bit so that you don't overeat, or change up your cheese from dairy to nondairy.
Fiscal conservatism is just an easy way to express something that is a bit more difficult, which is that the size and scope of government, and really the size and scope of politics in our lives, has grown uncomfortable, unwieldy, intrusive and ineffi...
You can't win with some people. If you're not in government, you're criticised for being not serious. If you are in government, you're criticised for wanting power. That's the Labour party's line of attack, and it's a bit ridiculous.
In my own life, I decided to leave meat off my plate in medical school, but was a bit slow to realise that dairy products and eggs are not health foods either.
I am a bit of a control freak. If I get married, my wife isn't going out. No way. She's staying at home. She's not going out to clubs without me. I've already decided the rules, whoever she is.
I could have closed down bits of British Home Stores to make more money but it's not my style. I want to make my money as a retailer, not by putting people out of work.
I played quite a bit for my home team, Morriston, in my teens. I batted and bowled, but I suffered the utter humiliation once when one of the Pontarddulais batsmen hit 32 runs in one over against me.
You end up going to school plays quite a bit as a parent, there are a lot of kids who are doing the job as well as they can, but there's always one or two who seem much more at home in the world of impersonation.
A lot of people, because of my contempt for the false consolations of religion, think of me as a symbolic public opponent of that in extremis. And sometimes that makes me feel a bit alarmed, to be the repository of other people's hope.
It's not a case of 'look at me in my car'; it's more, 'look at the car'. I like the idea of other people enjoying them, because everything has become a bit faceless and nobody likes the motor car any more.
I used to take my car and go down to the South Island for five or six days and climb glaciers and jump out of planes and jump off bridges and go white water rafting - a bit of thrill-seeking.
