You know, sometimes I don't understand what's wrong with us. This is just about the most creative and imaginative country on earth—and yet sometimes we just don't seem to have the gumption to exploit our intellectual property. We split the atom, and now we have to get French or Korean scientists to help us build nuclear power stations. We perfected the finest cars on earth—and now Rolls-Royce is in the hands of the Germans. Whatever we invent, from the jet engine to the internet, we find that someone else carts it off and makes a killing from it elsewhere.

Ping-pong was invented on the dining tables of England in the 19th century, and it was called Wiff-waff! And there, I think, you have the difference between us and the rest of the world. Other nations, the French, looked at a dining table and saw an opportunity to have dinner; we looked at it an saw an opportunity to play Wiff-waff.

These days we dimly believe that the Second World War was won with Russian blood and American money; and though that is in some ways true, it is also true that, without Churchill, Hitler would almost certainly have won.

It is possible to have a pretty good life and career being a leech and a parasite in the media world, gadding about from TV studio to TV studio, writing inconsequential pieces and having a good time.

My chances of being PM are about as good as the chances of finding Elvis on Mars, or my being reincarnated as an olive.

The mayors fund for London will be a streamlined vehicle for getting money from the wealth creating sector to communities across London that are facing hardship and deprivation and are the victims of crime.

Andrea Leadsom, I think, has all the qualities that you need at the moment. She's got a lot of zap, a lot of drive, and all the experience. Plus I think she can articulate what's needed at the moment, which is a bit of an antidote to some of the gloom and negativity and misunderstanding about what the Brexit vote means.