BBC Radio is not so much an art or industry as it is a way of life . . . a mirror that reflects . . . the eccentricities, the looniness that make Britons slightly different from other humans.

Don may yawn at the idea, which he often does, but the great thing about Don, he has confidence in me and Mike and Ed and Leslie and Steve, that we're not going go out and do stories that will put people to sleep.

BBC Radio is a never-never land of broadcasting, a safe haven from commercial considerations, a honey pot for every scholar and every hare-brained nut to stick a finger into.

Whenever it's suggested that our sponsors have some kind of influence or control of what we cover in some kind of censorship through financial pressure, it's rubbish. That's never happened.

I think it has sullied his presidency. As brilliant a politician as Bill Clinton is, as magnetic a personality as he can be, there is one little screw loose somewhere.

A lot of sponsors over the years have left us. They've all come back. But they chose to leave us for a while because of stories we have done about them or their products or their friend's products or whatever.

This [the movie Babe] is the way Americans want to think of pigs. Real-life 'Babes' see no sun in their limited lives, with no hay to lie on, no mud to roll in. The sows live in tiny cages, so narrow they can't even turn around. They live over metal grates, and their waste is pushed through slats beneath them and flushed into huge pits.