You're always a bit blind. If you look at stuff a few years later, you get a more objective look at it.

I'm not as self-destructive as Dylan Thomas, but I've certainly been around that behavior enough to have found it a release. The thing that I really enjoyed was being able to play misery.

When we get christened or married or die, we drift naturally in the direction of the church. And in moments of crisis, when our spiritual Tom-Tom is no longer telling us what to do, we find ourselves scrabbling at the vicarage door.

Anybody who was a politician at one stage - when they were at the "I'd like to be a train driver" stage of their lives - must also have thought: "I'd like to make the world a better place if possible." So, I think that's why most politicians go into it. They don't want to take over the world and most go into it for good reasons and then, presumably, are beset by endless things stopping them from following their natural inclination to do the right thing.

I meet people who are famous, and it's made me realise that fame has huge lifestyle disadvantages. I'm nervous about that. I don't want to become a celebrity.

I'm not Welsh and I didn't know that much about Dylan Thomas , and I saw that he's a huge icon of Welsh-ness.

Somehow I find it easier to inhabit characters if they are a little bit pathetic. I do seem to have an affinity with pathetic people.