My Dad was from Liverpool and he picked it up in the army. He'd often come out with this stuff.

I get around OK with a toolbox. As a kid I picked up skills following my dad through the oil fields of Oklahoma and West Texas. My wife Janine is hard to impress but she does think it's cool when I fix things around the house.

My play Safe Sex was picked apart because critics thought it was untrue. It was a play in which no one had AIDS but the characters talked about how it was going to change their lives.

Every job has its downside. For example being in a band the travel part of it - getting picked up from your house in a car going to the airport getting on a plane going from the airplane to a van then going from the van to a hotel.

Mayors could never get away with the kind of nonsense that goes on in Washington. In our world you either picked up the trash or you didn't. You either moved an abandoned car or you didn't. You either filled a pothole or you didn't. That's what we do every day. And we know how to get this stuff done.

Jesus picked up twelve men from the bottom ranks of business and forged them into an organisation that conquered the world.

I don't really count myself as a very sophisticated businessperson. I'm a creative artist. All I know from business I've picked up along the way.

The turning point was when I hit my 30th birthday. I thought if really want to write it's time to start. I picked up the book How to Write a Novel in 90 Days. The author said to just write three pages a day and I figured I can do this. I never got past Page 3 of that book.

A few years back when my style was 'punk grandma ' I picked up an amazing pair of sandals - orthopaedic ones with really thick soles. I've given them away to a friend now because these days my look is more '1980s substitute teacher gone wild.'

And from the first time I picked up a basketball at age eight - I had a lot of difficulty when I first picked up a basketball because I was a scrub - there were things that I liked about it.