But in my heart of hearts this is the kind of thing... this is what everyone is struggling with in their lives - relationships and family. To me it's always an interesting area to mine. I'm drawn to it.

Interesting things come your way but as you get older your lifestyle changes. I don't want to travel I don't want to be in a hotel room away from my family.

A family on the throne is an interesting idea. It brings down the pride of sovereignty to the level of petty life.

Well you have to keep your faith in the fact that there are a lot of intelligent people who are actively looking for something interesting people who have been disappointed so many times.

I was never the ingenue so hopefully that'll make it easier to age and still work. I know a lot of actors who are really dissatisfied with where they're at even though some of them are huge stars and I feel like 'Oh my God you're at the top.' Something interesting will come. It always does. I have faith.

It was an interesting question as to whether the BBC had a future in the digital world and what form of market failure could justify the licence fee system.

I think there's something quite interesting about the almost tragic quality of a lot of overwrought prose because it has a much more self-conscious awareness of its own failure to touch the real.

So the poet who wants to be something that he cannot be and is a failure in plain life makes up fictitious versions of his predicament that are interesting even to other persons because nobody is a perfect automobile salesman.

There is much to be said for failure. It is much more interesting than success.

I had the closest thing I have ever had to an out-of-body experience lying in bed one morning. I turned on the 'Today' programme and item four on the news was: 'The shadow chancellor has ruled himself out of the leadership.' I lay there thinking that's interesting then I realised it was me.