I had a happy childhood.

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

The day of the daredevil reporter who refuses to see obstacles to getting the truth, and seeing it with his or her own eyes, seems to have died.

Paul Keating told us before we were elected that you can do deals with [Rupert] Murdoch without saying you were doing a deal. Did we do that kind of thing? Maybe. But from around about the turn of the century, I felt strongly that we had to do something about media ownership and self-regulation. Tony [Blair] disagreed.

May I share with you my earliest memory of a political row? It was with my mother, about the Queen - classic Freudian stuff, shrinks would say. I was eight, and refusing to watch the Queen's Christmas Day broadcast.

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

We should confine booing in sports arenas to sport. I love a good boo as much as the next football fan.