Bill Bailey

Family helps you make clearer choices about things. Your priorities become clearer. Your obligations become clearer, and that is something I welcome. ”

I was an only child but I never longed for a sibling. It just didn't occur to me. ”

At yoga you get some sense of spiritual space so that people don't intrude. You can go there and close your eyes and no one will talk to you. People are too worried about not fainting to bother with some bloke who was on the telly. ”

People perceive me as this kind of hippy intellectual, reflecting and communing with nature or in a pyramid somewhere chanting. Really, no. I love speed, fast things, quad and road bikes, and bombing down a mountain. ”

As a young man, the temptation was to drink the minibar dry. I did all that - now I prefer to get outdoors. ”

As I get older, I have a very strong urge to know about stuff. I want to learn the names of trees and birds; that's the sort of knowledge I want to pass on to my son. ”

You have to go to Scotland at all times of the year - in order to appreciate the times when the sun does come out. ”

Riding a horse and using a phone camera is tricky but if you don't take pictures or record the moment, you lose it. You want to have a record of it. ”

There was an existential moment - I don't know if I want to call it crisis - when I turned 50 and I felt 'this is interesting; how did this happen?' It affected me in a way I wasn't expecting. It made me pause for reflection. ”

We are almost in a time beyond jokes, beyond satire. When the Trump era is called the 'post-truth' period, then this is the greatest joke of all, albeit quite depressing. ”