On the environmental front there's concern about global warming and high levels of carbon dioxide, and trees take in CO2 and store carbon.

I am attached to the west coast of Scotland - it's gorgeous to look at and challenging. You have to contend with the possibility of being blown away or rained on. And in the summer months you can be eaten alive by midges.

I remember being in China and realising how irrelevant not even Britain is, but also Europe. We're just another remote country that hardly impinges on some places at all.

If I ever had any vanity, then I definitely lost it by being on television. It doesn't do you any favours in terms of showing you what you look like and what your emotions are.

My favourite plant is the foxglove. I think they are a perfect balance between being a garden plant and a wild plant, as at home in woodland as they are in a city.

If you look at it ecologically, deforestation is high on the list of things which bring devastation. You cut down trees to build homes, for fuel, and you end up with no trees left, and you have to move on. If you take the earth as a whole, eventually there's nowhere to move on to.

The labour Party has lost the last four elections. If they lose another, they get to keep the liberal party.