It's much easier to make jokes about sensitive issues if there is some dissent, some conflict.

I'd rather call myself a mischief-maker, an imp, rather than a satirist. Satirist sounds so self important. Plus no one is calling himself an imp right now. It makes me feel special.

I wish I had played team sports. I think every kid should. Teamwork builds character - teaches people about leadership and cooperation.

Politicians who wear little tennis socks with the balls at the back should not be taken seriously.

The Amazon lot are perfectly reasonable, level-headed people who just want to make TV programmes. I don't think they are the enemy of the BBC or the other way round. It's not a war; these things can coexist. We can have Amazon and Netflix and the BBC and BT Sport, and people can make choices. That's what modern life is all about.

Where I would fault President Bush the most was that, in the wake of 9/11, he motivated our military, but he didn't call the nation into a state of war. And he didn't explain that this would take though a communal effort against common foe.

The U.S. might enjoy overwhelming military advantage, but its relative economic power, which in the long run is almost invariably decisive, is in decline. The interregnum after the Cold War, far from being the prelude to a new American age, was bearing the signs of what is now very visible: the emergence of a multipolar world.

Helplessness induces hopelessness, and history attests that loss of hope and not loss of lives is what decides the issue of war.