It's wonderful doing concerts in places like New York and London, but I feel a responsibility to also bring my work home, to bring world-class, classical music to Somerset.
I came home every Friday afternoon, riding the six miles on the back of a big mule. I spent Saturday and Sunday washing and ironing and cooking for the children and went back to my country school on Sunday afternoon.
My wife is very patient. On our honeymoon in 1992, we got a motor home and drove from L.A. to Idaho and then down the coast. I was running a lot, then so she would drop me off, drive six miles, park and wait for me.
My mother was determined to make us independent. When I was four years old, she stopped the car a few miles from our house and made me find my own way home across the fields. I got hopelessly lost.
My dad's a history buff, and I spent a lot of time on Hadrian's Wall. I became fascinated by the idea of what was so terrifying up there that the Romans built a 60-mile long, 30-ft-high stone wall to keep it out.
Riding in advance, we passed over one of these great plains; we looked back and saw the line of scattered horsemen stretching for a mile or more; and far in the rear against the horizon, the white wagons creeping slowly along.
The great thing about comedy is that the longer you've been alive, the more you have to talk about and the better you get. I've got some miles and some road savviness that some other guys don't have.
In the old days, a con man would be good looking, suave, well dressed, well spoken and presented themselves real well. Those days are gone because it's not necessary. The people committing these crimes are doing them from hundreds of miles away.
I really live a simple life and don't need very much to feel good and happy. Don't get me wrong; I believe you should get what you earn. Sometimes you have to fight for it.
You can tell by looking at me that I've got more miles behind me than I've got in front of me. When you reach that point, if you've got some good years left, you want to make sure that you use them wisely.
I find painting a much slower process than comedy, where you can go a mile a minute verbally and hope to God that some of the people out there understand you. I don't paint every day. I'm not that motivated.
Miles Davis was a part of my life from 1947 on. I was born in 1941 and I first heard him in 1947 on a 78 rpm. And then I followed his career, starting with his first solo album in 1951. He was an icon and inspiration and a mentor to me.
It's Messiaen's Turangalila Symphony I'm really looking forward to. Simon Rattle does it perfectly: he understands its primal rhythmic life force, and he and the wonderful Berliners make it a sheer riot of orchestral colour.
I like to express certain things that happen in my life, the joy of spring, the birds singing and young babies coming into the world. You know, the whole thing as well as the part I'm not happy with, the sad part.
About fifteen miles above New Orleans the river goes very slowly. It has broadened out there until it is almost a sea and the water is yellow with the mud of half a continent. Where the sun strikes it, it is golden.
I free-form it, rock n' roll it. I'm a creature of risk, so I don't know how I'm going to explore a Beethoven symphony until I'm doing it.
I'm a bit of a Luddite, really: I don't use email much, as I started drowning in it. So I said 'screw this' and dumped my laptop, though I've begun to re-engage with it.
I most definitely would not buy the 'Daily Mail,' which pours a kind of livid torpor into the eyelids of the average Brit - I skimmed through a copy recently and couldn't believe the rubbish in it.
In America, they have this nauseating habit of calling the conductor 'maestro'. I always slightly gag when the cor anglais player goes, 'Maestro, can I discuss bar 19 with you?'
Parallels between classical and pop are not new. The whole San Francisco movement of John Cage and Terry Riley went hand in glove with what the Velvet Underground were doing.
What's happened - in our country, anyhow - is that the young people have shied away from the formality of the concert hall, that tie - and - tails philharmonic image.
