I often think I would like to come even closer to home and write about somewhere like Wales, for example - which we in England tend to be a little snooty about. That's where the coal comes from and that sort of thing.

I don't want to pay good money to hear ordinary people's lunatic views. Most of the people who phone in are [lunatics] - certainly in Britain.

I am always surprised to go into a bar in Boston and three televisions are playing different channels, all at once. We are constantly surprised by this noise and television. It means that's what we are going to get, because we always get everything eventually.

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.

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.

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.

We don't really listen to what the other person is saying. We have gotten used to information being in such a concentrated form all the time, and so continuously, that conversation somehow seems inadequate for a lot of people, and therefore they can't join in it. You notice how many people can't argue anymore - without getting very upset.