I had my heart set on becoming an English teacher but stumbled into acting after meeting a theatrical agent in my dad's restaurant in San Diego.

Our last jam session was this past Christmas. Dad played his harmonica mom sang in English and Italian and I played guitar. I'm so happy that we could share that musical experience for one last time.

My dad came from Cuba when he was a teenager not speaking English. And I grew up here speaking Spanglish. That's the world in which I grew up and that's a world in which a lot of second generation immigrants find themselves.

My dad tells me that he took us to a pantomime when I was very very small - panto being a sort of English phenomenon. There's traditionally a part of the show where they'll invite kids up on the stage to interact with the show. I was too young to remember this but my dad says that I was running up onstage before they even asked us.

Had we lived I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood endurance and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman. These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale.

If your computer speaks English it was probably made in Japan.

No one who set out to design a form of communication would ever end up with anything like English Mandarin or any of the more than six thousand languages spoken today.

It's like there are all these languages available especially in terms of image. Why confine yourself to only English? There's all these languages and possibilities and concepts to speak or communicate with.

We have the character of an island nation: independent forthright passionate in defence of our sovereignty. We can no more change this British sensibility than we can drain the English Channel. And because of this sensibility we come to the European Union with a frame of mind that is more practical than emotional.

When I'm in town on Sundays I sometimes go down to the Central Bar in the East Village to watch English football. But my natural inclination now is to get in the car with my wife and kids and get out of town.