Black Friday is not another bad hair day in Wall Street. It's the term used by American retailers to describe the day after the Thanksgiving Holiday, seen as the semi-official start of Christmas shopping season.

We Brits print banknotes out in Debden in Essex, and have contracted it out to the private sector. Here in the U.S. it is a government operation right in the heart of Washington next door to the Holocaust Museum.

Britain, however, has ended up specializing in the ones you don't see as much of: defense aerospace, making drive shafts for cars, pills and drugs, designing chips that go into 94 percent of the world's mobile phones.

It doesn't annoy me but I think of myself as a presenter who is gay, rather than a gay presenter. It's a subtle distinction, but that's how I view it.

But sometimes it's good to dare yourself to do the unthinkable. And rather than stand in front of an audience with no clothes on, I decided to have a go at stand-up comedy.

I've never enjoyed sleep as much until I got the 'Today' job. There is something about early sleep that's much better than late sleep. I feel myself going to sleep; I don't just plonk my head on the pillow. It's a sort of winding-down thing.

Some people harbour an awkward clash of feelings - homosexual attraction on the one hand and shame or embarrassment about that attraction on the other. It is well known that the mind struggles to sustain conflicting views.