Growing up, I was always enthralled by Ronnie Barker. He made my dad howl with laughter, which always intrigued me, and he had the rare gift of being as good a performer as he was a writer.

It's because finance is so baffling that makes being an economist such a safe option. It nestles down comfortably with psychiatry and astrology as a profession where getting it patently wrong is just not a problem - and also, rather wonderfully, seems to have no adverse affect on their professional standing whatsoever.

In my career, all my most important breaks have come from Edinburgh. Winning awards, being reviewed, bagging my BBCR4 series and the chance to tour has all come from Edinburgh, which begs the question, why the hell have I left it so long to come back?

As a parent, I often wonder what I should be encouraging my kids to do for a career.

But that was war. Just about all he could find in its favor was that it paid well and liberated children from the pernicious influence of their parents.

I was the jokester, the one who made the family laugh.

I like to think that I'm a family man first and a professional athlete second.

I used to watch my mother cooking when I was a child; she influenced me a lot.