I’ve always been a big consumer of American journalism over the years and had an interest in the history of it and of the press in America; how it has changed.

I'm just trying to understand what's around me as much as anyone else is, really. To draw a bead on a moving target.

I fear we might be losing the basic human facility to be alone - and with that you throw out independent decision-making, what to trust, what not to trust; key stuff - a perilous loss.

I'm Irish, yeah, but I don't need to get up on a soapbox about it.

A lot of the fiction I read growing up was post-war American, and not all of it centers on Manhattan, but around people of the Mad Men generation, people like John Cheever and, in more modern times, Don DeLillo, who I always mention.

I wanted to show off - a simple impulse or drive; in much the same way as some kids wanted to play football, I wanted to show off. Not complicated in that sense, very natural; it just depends on how you want to show off.

Fruit... it's just God showing off. "Look at all the colours I know!"