Once journalists have been rifling through your dustbins, you do try and keep them at arms' length.

I'm busy and that's the way I like it - when I have too much downtime I get into trouble.

We were the only black family in an estate with 1,000 white families. Liverpool being quite racist in the Sixties, it was a bit grim growing up.

Critics called me 'egregious' - I had to look that one up - and 'creepy', but now I don't read them, I weigh them.

My life has been, I suppose, the most incredible series of highs and lows.

It's evolve or die, really, you have to evolve, you have to move on otherwise it just becomes stagnant.

The inventory process and stepping back in your life can sometimes be a very dark process. But it also can be extremely funny and surprising.

I have a stepladder. It's a very nice stepladder but it's sad that I never knew my real ladder.

I was thinking - if we get a cell with a trouser press, we can make cheese toasties.

Who needs drugs when you have Takeshi's Castle?

It's not supposed to be easy, if it's easy, it's no good, that's the way I look at it.

words, you see, " he said, looking at me again, "allow us to make permanent what is essentially transient.Turn a world filled with injustice and hurt into a place that is beautiful and lyrical.

I am happy to have love in my heart.

new york provides not only a continuing excitation but also a spectacle that is continuing.

Let's sink another drink, cause it will give me time to think.

Rest and play, are as vital to our health as nutrition and exercise

When you're poor, you have nothing to lose and be afraid of. Holding onto the dream and having nothing to lose is what helped me succeed.

A member of my family, who shall remain nameless, refers to all newborns as ‘blobs’.

The welfare culture tells the man he is not a necessary part of the family; he feels dispensable, his wife knows he is dispensable, his children sense it.

My family is from the South, and I can remember all those ladies I grew up with, like my great-aunts, who had handkerchiefs. There's something sweet about them.

The worst way to improve the world is to condemn it.