For a terrifying moment I thought he was going to hug me, but fortunately we both remembered we were English just in time. Still, it was a close call.

It's a sad fact of modern life that if you drive long enough, sooner or later you must leave London behind.

What frustrated me was the thought that with three thousand years of history someone in China, some monk in a monastery halfway up a mountain, must have developed a magic kata, a physical expression of formae. Or at least have got close enough to explain all those legendary swordsmen and their inexplicable desire to roost on the tops of bamboo trees.

It's a police mantra that all members of the public are guilty of something, but some members of the public are more guilty than others.

The media are doing this, not because they have a sinister motive, but because they love to feel that they are influencing events. That's why they hate politicians so much, because politicians have direct power and they do not.

The motto of West African cooking is that if the food doesn't set fire to the tablecloth the cook is being stingy with the pepper.

The first rule about a black woman’s hair is you don’t talk about a black woman’s hair. And the second rule is you don’t ever touch a black woman’s hair without getting written permission first.