Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence.

I'm well-travelled so I can see places coming up. I went to St. Croix in the West Indies at Christmas and it had been hit by a really bad tornado. Values there have gone down but I guarantee they will be up again in eight years. So I'll get in now while it's cheap as chips.

When I was eight years old I got a dummy for Christmas and started teaching myself. I got books and records and sat in front of the bathroom mirror practising. I did my first show in the third grade and just kept going there was no reason to quit.

I had eight brothers and sisters. Every Christmas my younger brother Bobby would wake up extra early and open everybody's presents - everybody's - so by the time the rest of us got up all the gifts were shredded ribbons off torn open and thrown aside.

May I share with you my earliest memory of a political row? It was with my mother about the Queen - classic Freudian stuff shrinks would say. I was eight and refusing to watch the Queen's Christmas Day broadcast.

Santa is our culture's only mythic figure truly believed in by a large percentage of the population. It's a fact that most of the true believers are under eight years old and that's a pity.

A doctor must work eighteen hours a day and seven days a week. If you cannot console yourself to this get out of the profession.

I have to work really hard eight shows a week to get a nice check as an actor. But when I write a play and it's a - knock wood - hit the checks come in for many years.

For every two minutes of glamour there are eight hours of hard work.

By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day.