The Centre is very important to me it's about trust - about truth.

Team GB's success at the Beijing Olympics can in part be said to have been made in Manchester. For example all the cycling medal winners trained at Manchester's velodrome the National Cycling Centre.

The cross is the centre of all this in every respect.

I had a very very difficult relationship with my mother who was supremely self-centred. She was hilariously self-centred. She did not really take interest in anything that didn't immediately affect her.

The world is not going into concentric blocs of power. It is actually going into a diffusion of power with more centres of decision-making than ever in human civilisation. That requires you to place yourself in far more hubs of power than ever before.

In the sense that you're not at the centre of power like a president or prime minister of a major power everyone is marginalised my position doesn't isn't unique in that respect. I think there are different sorts of relevance in different contexts.

Poetry is at the centre of my life too emotionally speaking and intellectually speaking - it's just that I'm one of those people who enjoy doing other stuff as well.

If I'm pushed I'd also have to admit I don't like people with allergies. They just annoy me. There seems to be something far too self-centred about it. 'No thanks I'm allergic.' Why not just say 'No thanks'? I wasn't asking for your medical history I was just passing around the nuts. Trying to be friendly that's all.

I tell students 'If you are learning from YouTube I almost don't want to teach you because what you learn from YouTube it takes 10 times as long to unlearn.' They do an approximation of the centre of the note an approximation of the interpretation a cloned version.

And indeed this theme has been at the centre of all my research since 1943 both because of its intrinsic fascination and my conviction that a knowledge of sequences could contribute much to our understanding of living matter.