I've become a professional failure - in order to pay the mortgage I have to remain unemployed. Luckily, a disaster always seems to befall me at exactly the right moment.

I expect that in 40 years' time I'll be writing political tomes and working for an organisation like Oxfam.

Top Chef is a very smooth-running machine. All the people working there are incredibly professional and absolutely at the top of their game.

America thinks of itself as a meritocracy, so people have more respect for success and more contempt for failure.

You know when you tell a self-deprecating story at a dinner party, everyone's laughing along with you? But then when someone else repeats that same story at another dinner party you feel they're all laughing at you?

I was once hired to write a column for 'The Guardian' and then got fired before I'd submitted my first one. That was unusual. Most newspapers wait until I've written at least one piece for them before firing me.

People in London think of London as the center of the world, whereas New Yorkers think the world ends three miles outside of Manhattan.