Friends have suggested that I am the least qualified person to talk about happiness, because I am often down, and sometimes profoundly depressed. But I think that's where my qualification comes from. Because to know happiness, it helps to know unhappiness.

The media are obsessed with spin doctors and with portraying them as a bad thing, yet seem addicted to our medicine.

There is something in me that makes me see things through.

The junk food of political journalism...all reshuffle stories are crap.

The thing about politicians in Britain is that they are out there, you can lobby them, get close to them, there are loads of ways you can protest against them, and booing is a pretty weak way of doing it.

Don't accept that you are in crisis just because everyone says you are.

I hold no candle for George Osborne whatsoever. He has no strategic skills, is a hopeless chancellor, has no idea how most people have to live and his policies are failing and hurting millions.