If I go to a party I don't feel like I have to be in the centre. But I do find myself quite often being placed in that position. Even when I was younger at school, I would be asked to make a speech. I don't remember putting up my hand and all that often but I'd just find myself there.

I'm doing a new musical on Broadway, which opens in October called The Boy from Oz, where I play Peter Allen. For those of you who don't know, he became first famous in America for marrying Liza Minelli.

Salvatore Ferragamo have done some nice handmade suits for me.

I've never heard my dad say a bad word about anybody. He always keeps his emotions in check and is a true gentleman. I was taught that losing it was indulgent, a selfish act.

I've always felt that if you back down from a fear, the ghost of that fear never goes away. It diminishes people. So I've always said 'yes' to the thing I'm most scared about. The fear of letting myself down - of saying 'no' to something that I was afraid of and then sitting in my room later going, 'I wish I'd had the guts to say this or that' - that galvanizes me more than anything.

My father was an army champion boxer... in the British army. And so he loved boxing and talked it up as a sport. But then when my brother and I were beating the crap out of each other, he was always trying to tone it down. But I am a fan of boxing.

Giving people a hand up, not a handout, is the way forward.