This may sound arrogant, but I believe that if we'd done teamship better, we'd still be there. Where we fell down was the inability to hold together. We should have learnt from the great football teams. The players may not like each other. They have egos, they have their own ambitions, they have different personalities, but they are still bloody good teams.

One in four of us will have a mental illness at some point. That is a lot of people.

Greg Dyke is on record as saying that once the BBC was attacked, it was their job to defend themselves. But that is not their job.

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 And like me, he could be the life and soul of the party, but also quite withdrawn.

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.

One of the more fatuous remarks I've heard in recent days is that 'My Life,' Clinton's autobiography, is too long and, at almost 1,000 pages, short it is not. But this man was for eight years the President of the most powerful country on earth.

Sometimes Jonathan [Powell] and myself would go to Tony [Blair] and ask him if he was absolutely sure about this or that. That was our job. But ultimately it was his decision.