Gwen Stefani has amazing style. I used to really love Courtney Love and anything she wore I loved. Or Chloe Sevigny because I really love that sort of classic look and I like being girly and flowery and wearing little D&G dresses. I wear hats a lot too. I think it goes back to when I was a bit grungy and was a skater girl for a bit.

The next thing I wrote was in a writing class at night school. It was about a poor woman who worked at a dime store and who was all alone for Christmas in Laurel Mississippi.

Largely this is a class thing - writers tend to be cosseted little middle-class kiddies who think that the world owes them a royalty cheque. But just doing it - being in your room for years on end locked in your head alone with invented ghosts - it weakens and softens the body. And I know I can't just live in my head.

We are the only class in history that has been left to fight its battles alone unaided by the ruling powers. White labor and the freed black men had their champions but where are ours?

In my cranky old age I actually prefer recording alone now on 'The Simpsons ' for example because I find that the director can just focus on what I'm doing and I can do a lot of variations. A lot of times when I record with a group I'll stay after class for another hour or two.

The biggest opportunity in 2013 is in Africa. It has seven out of the ten fastest-growing economies in the world. In Nigeria alone there are 100 million people with mobile phones. In total 300 million Africans - five times the population of Britain - are in the middle class.

For students today only 10 percent of children from working-class families graduate from college by the age of 24 as compared to 58 percent of upper-middle-class and wealthy families.

As a result of the digital age and the decline of first-class mail there is no question that the Postal Service must change and develop a new business model.

I think all writers of my age who are brought up on films probably by the age of 16 have seen many more films than they have read classics of literature. We can't help but be influenced by film. Film has got some great tricks that it's taught writers.

I never took guitar lessons. I took classical piano lessons from the age of six when we lived in Holland.