If you are a friend of somebody and that friend is in trouble, you don't just drop them.

I've always wanted to go to Timbuktu. First of all I think it has the best name of anywhere in the world.

I'm not terribly technological. I'm awfully backward about iPads and BlackBerries and suchlike; I still have a great fondness for Teletext, and I clung onto my fax machine for as long as I could, but eventually you have to move with the times.

In cyberspace, 95 per cent of what you read is hearsay.

Twitter is very impulsive and impermanent and you only have 140 characters. There is no greater 'Emperor' of Twitter than Stephen Fry.

Chairman Mao not only introduced Pinyin in China, but also simplified half the Chinese characters, believing that fewer strokes would enable more people to learn to write the characters.

It was something of a personal challenge for me to come up with a business suitable for the Internet world and the Internet age.