When I grew up, we didn't have a TV, and I think more families today have ambitions of getting out of their environment, such as sending their children to university.

I don't like seeing myself on television and I don't enjoy filming. What I actually enjoy is thinking about how I am going to express something or how we are going to make the visual metaphor.

I've been all over the world on my own because, as a scientist, you travel a great deal if your work is reasonably successful or published. I get invitations to go to all sorts of strange countries where I would mostly be by myself and just meet other people there, instead of having travelling companions.

I like travelling on my own. It means I'm completely free to think about what's around me.

My first vote was for a communist in east London when I was a medical student. But I've voted Tory, Labour and Lib Dem in my time.

Parents should talk to their children, even when they are babies and can't talk back.

We are more dependent on science and engineering than at any other time in history. However, there is plenty of evidence that far too many people are scientifically illiterate, often having been put off science at school.