I threw [Picasso's] drawing on the floor and in doing so, threw away about £50m.

I've always been generous and like giving to charities and people in need.

I had to leave school at 14 because my father got injured in the mines and I had to support my family. I was an undertakers assistant, then a plasterer, before doing my military service in the RAF. All the while, I was doing amateur dramatics and dreaming of getting a scholarship to the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.

The greatest danger in life is not taking chances. There are so many negative people wanting to grind you down, but you can't let them. If people say you are mad, you know you're on the right track.

My father was a coal hewer from Goldthorpe, a coal-mining village in South Yorkshire. He played for the Yorkshire second team as an opening fast bowler - to me he was a gorgeously heroic man. He helped form a union and closed down the Barnsley seam because it was seeping gas, and saved many, many lives.

My dad was opening fast bowler for Yorkshire's second team and I couldn't believe he could die. He wasn't going to get better for at least six months, so I left school early to become the family breadwinner.

In the Arctic I met some Russian sailors on a submarine and they chorused, "Gordon's alive!"