I got into music, I was in a band, I was at art school. I was quite trendy, although I'd hate to meet myself. The over-preening, the pretentiousness, the arrogance of youth! I think, 'Oh, that guy was so full of himself.'

My parents didn't take me to the theatre to see Chekhov when I was growing up - we went to see 'Francie and Josie' once every five years.

I don't remember 'Doctor Who' not being part of my life, and it became a part of growing up, along with The Beatles, National Health spectacles, and fog. And it runs deep. It's in my DNA.

My childhood growing up in that part of Glasgow always sounds like some kind of sub-Catherine Cookson novel of earthy working-class immigrant life, which to some extent it was, but it wasn't really as colourful that.

My father's mother really had a profound influence on me. She literally began her day with an hour of reading. But the most fundamental impact was education.

The best way to obtain truth and wisdom is not to ask from books, but to go to God in prayer, and obtain divine teaching.

I came at age in the '60s, and initially my hopes and dreams were invested in politics and the movements of the time - the anti-war movement, the civil rights movement. I worked on Bobby Kennedy's campaign for president as a teenager in California and the night he was killed.

I think one of the biggest myths is that education cannot flourish with regulation. Another myth is that wherever the state sponsors education, it doesn't flourish.