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.

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

I tried being a mechanic and I tried catering, but I realized I had even less aptitude for semi-skilled labour than for academic work.

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

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

My life's ambition is to play a James Bond villain. I have the cat and the eye-patch, so I'm just waiting for the call. For some reason, though, the phone hasn't rung.

I think that magazines like Vanity Fair are still operating under the old rules, and that if you come to work for a magazine like Vanity Fair, even today, you're certainly expected to treat people like Peggy Siegal very deferentially.