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.

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.

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.

When I did that interview with Hepburn, the only ground rule was, you did not discuss Spencer Tracy. Spencer Tracy's widow is still alive, and she respected that.

You can be a great president and be ridden with flaws. Of course we know that.

Kids' views are often just as valid as the teachers'. The best teachers are the ones that know that.

Some people, you have to grit your teeth in order to stay in the same room as them, but you get on and ask the questions you assume most of the people watching want to ask.