Overhead will eat you alive if not constantly viewed as a parasite to be exterminated. Never mind the bleating of those you employ. Hold out until mutiny is imminent before employing even a single additional member of staff. More start-ups are wrecked by overstaffing than by any other cause, bar failure to monitor cash flow.

I couldn't care less what anyone's 'perception' of me is. I'm too long in the tooth to care.

I hear poets complaining: 'We face what our forebears did not face. We face TV. We face radio. We face this and that.'

The key to successful business is self belief and application.

You can actually be bored stiff while you're dying.

I cannot abide being bored.

I have been portrayed by actors in three television documentaries, two plays, one musical and a film. It's no fun watching yourself being traduced and imitated by an actor.