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.

In an ideal world, it would not take a film star to get the media focused on mental illness.

My aunty says I'm the double of my father. He was a workaholic, which I've definitely inherited. And like me, he could be the life and soul of the party, but also quite withdrawn.

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

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

I will continue to help the political causes I believe in in any way I can.

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.