Well, it's a nice quiet time for Iron Maiden, and I'll be releasing a new solo album next year, so this is a really good time for the managing out my solo career, which is quite well.
I could, I think, quite easily have gone to Oxford. I got four good A levels, but my father's income was such that I wouldn't have got a grant, and he wouldn't let me go to university, and that was the end of it.
I did a weird thing when I was about 24. For four years I had written quite a lot of poetry, and I started reading through it and thought some of it was really good. So I burnt it all.
I think it's good for parents to be supportive, to motivate, and to somewhat nudge their kids because the majority of kids will want to quit something when it gets hard - that's just their nature. Children will normally take the easier road.
People have asked me why are Australians and Brits so good at American accents, and it's quite simple. We grew up listening to the American sound on our TV. That's why American actors have a hard time with foreign accents.
At the BBC we've had plenty of women in good management jobs. It comes and goes but there's been plenty. On air, I think there's quite a bit more we can do.
I just sing and write songs and wear what I want. It's quite a good job really. If I wanted to I suppose I could become more of a fashion icon, but singing is my thing.
When I was 14 or 15, I was a really good volleyball player, so I thought, 'Well, maybe I'll just get a scholarship to an Ivy League school through volleyball.' Then I quit when I decided to focus on theater.
It was good for us, I suppose. Those kinds of times produce qualities in us that make us better for having had them. My parents were not getting along. My mother was quite intolerant of friendships that were being developed.
Asylum was good exposure for me and it is still shown quite often on television. I remember the special effects people had fun making a little doll that looked like me - which is not so easy - and it had to move along the floor.
Remember this, folks - I am a Hillbilly, and I don't always Bet the same way I talk. Good advice is one thing, but smart gambling is quite another.
Quite frankly, Russian aggression in Ukraine and its illegal occupation of Crimea remind us that we still have a good deal more work to do to guarantee the strategic vision of a Europe whole, free and at peace.
And trust, yes, which is important, but that is what I aim towards. Now that is difficult for some people, and with that desire to get things as good as possible, I would say that I'm probably regarded as quite prickly to work with.
I've got an Avalon guitar - that's the company that used to be Lowden. They come out of Ireland, and they're like these folk kind of guitars. You can pick 'em, you can strum 'em - they're quite good.
I didn't do plays at school, because I didn't have the confidence. At 14, I was at boarding school in Devon and I suffered from dyslexia quite badly, but they had a very good department there which specialised in it.
I think my heart is quite selfish. If I followed my heart, I would not be a good person. But I have moral principles. I have to sit down and reflect.
I always wrote music for my friends, but my focus was on playing piano. I didn't think I'd be quite good enough to be a soloist, but I believed that if I worked hard enough, I could work as a player, a teacher.
I'm quite bullish. We're coming up on year 15 of a flat stock market. Historically that's a pretty good sign. So I'm not a hedge-fund manager but if I was I think I'd be feeling pretty good.
There's a difference between describing and evoking something. You can describe something and be quite clinical about it. To evoke it, you call it up in the reader. That's what writers do when they're good.
When you've got good actors, they're going to come up with good stuff, but you're never quite sure how the dynamics are going to work between them.
Also, from a technical point of view, as you're standing in front of a microphone all day, it's quite a good idea that I should play a laid back sort of character because if he was too frenetic, I'd be exhausted by lunch!
