I'm wary of the new contactless ways of paying. The idea of paying with your phone is a little worrying: I have lost more than one over the years.

I have always been quite careful when I have been approached to do a television project to have the option of writing the accompanying book.

I worked on local papers, before taking a job as a webmaster with a very well known telecommunications company in London, as I thought the internet was the future.

I live in a perpetual present. I don't look back and I don't look forward. I just live from week to week.

After I graduated from the University of Glasgow, I was a self-employed archaeologist going from dig to dig around Scotland, and it was not well-paid. I was an excavator, not a lecturer as well, so paying rent on a flat was tricky. In the end I decided to retrain as a journalist as I couldn't see a future in it.

My father was a self-employed, commission-only salesman. He sold double-glazing and fitted kitchens, amongst other things. As he never declared himself unemployed, there was never recourse to benefits, so if money was tight, money was tight. It taught me that we were a closed unit, and that we had to be resourceful.

It took me a while to get established - success didn't happen overnight.