I've never been a career builder. I didn't go to drama school and hardly went to any school at all.

When you get real stage fright, it comes like a sledgehammer out of the blue in the middle of something that you know you've done too many times before, and there's no rhyme or reason for it. It's something quite different from being nervous. It's almost paralysing.

I'm a bit of a recluse, very fond of my own company.

I very often wake up at two in the morning with my stomach going over. Sometimes it's difficult to work out why - it's all the things you've put to one side during the day.

I have seen great jazz musicians die obscure and drinking themselves to death and not really being able to get any work and working in small, funky jazz clubs.

After the death of the sadistic dictator Gen. Sanni Abacha in 1998, Nigeria underwent a one-year transitional military administration headed by Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar, who uncharacteristically bowed out precisely on the promised date for military disengagement. Did the military truly disengage, however? No.

I hate flying. It creeps me out, and it scares me half to death.

I hate death; it takes people away from you. You're left feeling rudderless.