I'm not interested in details that might get someone into trouble. I'm more interested in generalities rather than the particulars, as a journalist would be. Names, dates and times don't interest me at all. I'm interested in feelings and emotions. Most people are game, once they realize that you're on the level as far as that's concerned and you're not about exposing them, then they feel quite free to talk about it. Police officers and social workers are no exception.

That's all very well as an abstract moral principle, Avril, a coffee-table theoretical construct, but there's no denying the sheer gratuitous pleasure to be derived from seeing members of the ruling class in pain and torment.

Ah wonder if anybody this side of the Atlantic has ever bought a baseball bat with playing baseball in mind.

You can argue about violence. It's destructive, but people are inherently violent in a lot of ways. Abusing drugs is always bad for people and bad for society, but the whole notion of festival is tied up with intoxication.

Nothing is covered adequately by the BBC. The BBC has become the biggest disappointment - they're just so terrified. And in a way it's not their fault: the parties have used them as a political football.

We have to concentrate back on: Where is the money going? Where's it been going for the last thirty years? How do we start to redistribute the cake more evenly, and give people opportunities? That's as much about poor white people in West Virginia as it is about poor black people on the Southside of Chicago.

I'm quite comfortable now with being misunderstood. I don't really feel the need either to pander to it or to refute it. Just go on, and do what I've got to do.