My father and I rarely saw eye to eye when I was growing up. We saw the world differently. It was only when we were both adults that we were able to share spectacles. However, football, and particularly the World Cup, was when we, enemy combatants, could traverse trenches and be together.

A phoenix, Beirut seems to always pull itself out its ashes, reinvents itself, has been conquered numerous times in its 7,000-year history, yet it survives by both becoming whatever its conquerors wished it to be and retaining its idiosyncratic persona.

The Lebanese Civil War, 1975-1990, spanned four World Cups. It would have been a more symmetrical five had the Lebanese begun in 1974, but you know, we're Mediterranean, and timing isn't our forte.

I jokingly say if there was one great thing about, you know, the Lebanese Civil War was that it forced me to read.

The OIC has a huge responsibility and a great opportunity to lift humanity to a higher level of peace and prosperity and to make this planet a better place, not just for your people but for rest of the world.

A modern hero is very ambiguous. I went through some very rough times in Czechoslovakia - the occupation by the Germans at the end of the war. We had people going against their tanks with brooms. Are they nuts, or are they heroes?

This is an era of violent peace.

I left the Army in 2000 and went into industry before I started appearing on TV in 2003. My best job there was on a series called 'Crafty Tricks Of War' for the BBC. I loved that because it celebrated how clever and inventive people are and the ingenuity that goes into solving problems.