Growing up in Middlesbrough I was taught to be resilient and competitive. My teachers made us believe that just because kids were at private school up the road, it didn't mean they were better than us.

I remember early in my career people telling me I needed to change my accent, that I needed to sound more professional, more BBC perhaps, but I think if I wasn't from Middlesbrough I wouldn't have done as well as I have.

I always felt I had to prove my intelligence.

There are a lot of women who do a similar job to me who are paid a hell of a lot more... who are a lot posher than me.

I loved Debussy, Stravinsky, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, anything with romantic melodies, especially the nocturnes. Nietzsche was a hero, especially with 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra.' He gets a bad rap; he's very misunderstood. He's a maker of individuals, and he was a teacher of teachers.

You don't want to engage in road rage when the person in the next car might be your child's future teacher or your dentist's father.

Kids below 10 or 12, I think they just need to learn by playing at golf. Later on, in high school, when they develop muscles and everything, that's when they need to see about getting lessons.

Essentially, social education is moral education, and moral education is preparation for citizenship... When Jefferson and others advocated public education, it was to prepare for citizenship in a new, constitutional, democratic society.