To me, marriage is partly a religious thing and I'm not religious.

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

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.

Tony [Blair] slowly sucked me back in for the 2005 campaign, and from six months out, I was basically working full time trying to keep the Tony[Blair] - Gordon[Brown] thing together for the campaign. It was awful.

My public caricature - that of a self-confident alpha male - is only partly accurate.

I remember talking to Alex Ferguson about Tony [Blair] and Gordon [Brown], and he said: "Why doesn't Tony just get rid of him?" But if you sack someone in football, they can't turn up to training the next day. In politics they're still on the pitch. Gordon would still have been a big player.

For all that the papers would say I was a liar, I took the words I was saying at briefings as seriously as Tony Blair took what he would say at the Despatch Box. I find it very difficult not to tell the truth. I felt I was accountable for what I said.