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

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'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.

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

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.

I miss being fawned over by restaurateurs and chefs.