Travelling to make television programmes means I have some unusual food memories. In Pasto, Colombia, I was taken to a restaurant where I chose my meat for the evening from a cage of white rats. It tasted perfectly good - like rabbit.

You have to be damn certain you're putting something better in its place.

Recently, I had a hip resurfaced. It's different from a hip replacement because it's done with titanium. I like to think that it's the consequence of riding horses so strenuously, but I fear it's much more mundane and was just early-onset arthritis.

I hate flying. My stomach churns at the mere thought of it.

I've always believed you've got to steal the joyful moments when you can.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to be the best, but when it takes over the joy in the moment, and the joy in the journey, then that's where there's an internal tension. And I have to surrender that.

The joy of being a consumer is that it doesn't require thought, responsibility, self-awareness or shame: All you have to do is obey the first urge that gurgles up from your stomach. And then obey the next. And the next. And the next.

And of all illumination which human reason can give, none is comparable to the discovery of what we are, our nature, our obligations, what happiness we are capable of, and what are the means of attaining it.