I didn't want to be the archetypal sponging brother-in-law so I didn't go into acting when I got to the States. I thought 'No I'll go to school and then I'll be an English teacher that'll be fun.' But I was horrible as a teacher. As hard as I tried I just couldn't inspire those kids to take an interest in Milton and Shakespeare and Donne.

I think it's sad that movies and television have caused the theatre to fade as a popular art form. I hope to get young people into the theatre and expose them to Shakespeare.

Was there ever such stuff as great as part of Shakespeare? Only one must not say so! But what think you? - What? - Is there not sad stuff? What? - What?

Ooh it's too embarrassing to share my innermost romantic secrets - although I have written Danielle the odd poem. If anything they are more comedic than romantic. They used to be well-received but that was before she started studying Shakespeare at drama college. Now I feel so inept.

We read too much Shakespeare at school and view our parliamentary politics as dynastic drama in which an impatient crown prince frets at his long subordination and begins to scheme for the throne he knows he merits was promised and has earned.

What we know is that Shakespeare wrote perhaps the most remarkable body of passionate love poetry in the English language to a young man.

I have always wanted what I have now come to call the voice of personal narrative. That has always been the appealing voice in poetry. It started for me lyrically in Shakespeare's sonnets.

It is jazz music that called me to be a musician and I have always sang the songs that moved me the most. Singers like Frank Sinatra and myself we interpret the songs that we like. Not unlike a Shakespearean actor that goes back to the greatest words ever written we go back to the greatest songs.

But I don't think there has ever been anything written on the nature of violent man as deep and as thorough as Shakespeare's Titus. I think it puts all modern movies and modern exploitations of violence to shame.

Particularly for English people Shakespeare is always at the forefront of both drama and the English language. He's always been there. I can't remember starting school and not learning about him.