I love doing demonstrations. I think to be a great chef you have to be a great teacher. I love doing classes with people who love food and enjoy food bringing them all around one table so to speak.

From the simple stringing together of lemon garlands for the goddess Durga to dividing the prasadam or blessed foods for the children first I came to associate food not only with feminity but also with purity and divinity.

I wake up every morning happy for where I am in life. It's not all about the cooking but the fact that I can contribute by using my influence to help people all over the country. In the last two years my partners and I have fed more than 10 million hungry people by bringing meat to food banks.

Most fear stems from sin to limit one's sins one must assuredly limit one's fear thereby bringing more peace to one's spirit.

It wasn't not being famous any more or even not being a recording artist. It was having nobody who needed me no phones ringing nothing to do. Because I'm still too young to do nothing. I was only 24 when all that happened. Now at 40 I feel I've got more to give than I ever have.

It was deeply important for me to understand where Mandela came from. Because we know where he was going and that's a famous story but who was he? Where did he come from? What was his upbringing?

On the one hand the idea of marriage and the sort of traditional family life repulses me. But on the other hand I long for it you know what I mean? I'm constantly in conflict with things. And it is because of my past and my upbringing and the journey that I've been on.

Whole communities are growing up without fathers or male role models. Bringing up a family in the best of circumstances is not easy. To try to do it by placing the entire burden on women - 91% of single-parent families in Britain are headed by the mother according to census data - is practically absurd and morally indefensible.

I had a really wonderful upbringing. We were a tight family. It was wonderful to grow up with so many siblings. We were all just a year or two apart and we were always so supportive of each other. I learned everything from my older brother and sister and taught it to my younger sisters.

Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.