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.

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

Everyone said to me growing up, "You're like an American. You have to go to America. That's your spiritual home."

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've never been to a shrink. But my parents were very psychologically literate - my father had undergone Freudian analysis - and we often talked about other people in psychological terms, so I picked up a lot of that.

In Britain, by contrast, we still think that class plays a part in determining a person's life chances, so we're less inclined to celebrate success and less inclined to condemn failure. The upshot is that it's much easier to be a failure in Britain than it is in America.