I have real fears for Cuba based on the South American experience. Where you have had such a stern regime, as Fidel's [Castro], there is no culture of politics.

If you see our best seller list, most of them are books that are given as gifts. They are books you give to flatter somebody.

I wonder if this reason is partly geographical, that talk radio is so much more successful in North America than in Britain? People who are very remote - I'm thinking of Newfoundland - feel very connected though the radio.

I am no apologist for Fidel's [Castro] regime. It is, after all, a totalitarian regime. So I would like to see that change.

Argentina is really in a different category because they butchered all their Indian or indigenous people in the war of the desert in 1850s. Which sets them aside from their neighbors in a macabre way.

That's more about lifestyle [Peter Mayles], living abroad. It's about buying a donkey and house in south France, and that's a slightly different thing. A very popular genre but that's not quite my thing.

I wouldn't like to see Cuba change in other ways. And the trouble is when Fidel [Castro] does go - I am sure he will at some stage. He will probably be replaced by some sort of Western capitalism, ultimately.