I loved my time growing up in Northern Ireland doing youth drama, that is where it all began for me.

When I was growing up, Belfast City Hall was surrounded by security, and we had no access to it. But now, people come in and out of it all the time. On a nice day, office workers and students sit on the lawn outside and have lunch. It's great to see how Northern Ireland has changed. To be part of that is fantastic.

I get an awful lot of people coming up and saying they went to school with me. There must have been 80,000 pupils at that school!

In my life, I have made the occasional catastrophic choice, and it's just a case of moving on and learning from it.

The failure to work out sensible budgets makes it impossible for government agencies to make long-term plans, and instead leaves them scrambling to spend money in the short term.

Marriage has been a way of attempting to ensure the replication of power and wealth from one generation of another, passing it down from men to men.

Money is a strange business. People who haven't got it aim it strongly. People who have are full of troubles.

I adore cooking and baking and holiday feasts and dining with friends and spending too much money on mind-blowing meals in wonderful restaurants, but mostly, and quite simply, I love food.