we all suffer in our different ways from being prisoners of birth.

I wrote a million words in the first year, and I could never have done that outside of prison.

I'm passionate again about writing. This is important to me; it's got to be the comeback book.

When I was deputy chairman I could travel from Glasgow to Edinburgh without leaving Tory land. In a two-week period I covered every constituency in which we had an MP. There were 14. Now we have only one. We appear to have given up.

There are defining moments in one's life when you learn about yourself, and you deposit that knowledge in the experience account, so you can draw on it at some later date.

I find I don't learn a lot while I'm talking

And I did wonder - because it's now three years ago since I left prison - whether there would come a time when I would forget it, or it would be in the past as anything else might be - no, it's there every day of my life.