When I was growing up, my idea of a writer was someone like Sven Hassel, that mysterious Danish author who wrote thrillers about men clambering over walls and getting tangled in barbed wire.

When I was growing up, there was a feeling in one's living room as much as in one's local gallery that a little elitism was good for the soul.

I've been asked which of the other arts novel-writing is most like, and I have come to believe it is acting. Of course, in terms of pattern it can be like music, in terms of structure it can be like painting, but the job to me is most like acting.

When you grow up by the sea, you spend a good deal of time looking at the horizon. You wonder what on Earth the waves might bring - and where the sea might deposit you - until one day you know you have lived between two places, the scene of arrival and the point of departure.

I love the gym; I love basketball. I'm really passionate about it.

The trial of Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius has kept me fascinated and shocked in equal measure. But like many women, I was relieved this week when he was found guilty of culpable homicide after killing his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.

Action sports is just in a new era: thinking outside the box, being creative, and inventing new things. I just think people dig that. It's a new way of being an athlete.

A lot of clubs have lost the perspective of what is a football club.