If I were to ask you who the first million-pound show winner was on British TV, you'd probably go for Judith Keppel. She was, indeed, the first 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire' contestant to win £1 million, but the first one on TV was actually Clare Barwick, who won £1 million on Chris Evans' show 'TFI Friday.'
It's funny because the perception is that the typical 'X Factor' contestant is the person who's just working 9 to 5 and just decides to one day go and audition. So yeah, for me, it was a very different story.
I don't think 'X Factor' would put someone in front of the camera on purpose if they were ill. I don't think that's something they would do. There's psychologists who test out all the contestants before they go on.
I have great empathy for all the contestants that come on 'Top Chef,' whether they go home right away or they make it to the finish line. It's a very vulnerable position they put themselves in and I feel for them.
I don't know one of my friends who is considered a conservative who has not had to go back and thoroughly think through everything. You do a lot of soul-searching - 'cause we are not going to win any popularity contests.
When I was seventeen, I left Scotland to go to Kent, a well-to-do boarding school in Connecticut, where there was a contingent of really naughty kids.
Lawyers have their duties as citizens, but they also have special duties as lawyers. Their obligations go far deeper than earning a living as specialists in corporation or tax law. They have a continuing responsibility to uphold the fundamental principles of justice from which the law cannot depart.
For me life is continuously being hungry. The meaning of life is not simply to exist, to survive, but to move ahead, to go up, to achieve, to conquer.
I continuously go further and further learning about my own limitations, my body limitation, psychological limitations. It's a way of life for me.
I think actors go along a continuum from Simon Callow down to kind of Ross Kemp, and I like to think of myself as the Ross Kemp of comedy. He's very good in 'East Enders' because he plays a version of himself. I think I can play a version of myself - that's about all I can do.
What we know is that when girls don't go to school, they earn lower salaries. They get married earlier. They have higher infant and maternal mortality rates. And they're more likely to contract HIV, less likely to immunize their children.
I have two cousins with juvenile diabetes. They both contracted the disease before the age of 5, and it was so heartbreaking watching them go through daily blood tests and injections. It is such a difficult disease to live with and requires constant attention; a tough thing to explain to a child.
It's not government that creates jobs; it's small business. Our job is to make sure they have the access to capital, the access to contracting opportunities, and the help, advice and mentoring that they need to go out and be successful.
I'm not necessarily opposed to greater American involvement. But if that's the way the Mexican government wants to go, it needs to come clean about it. Just look at what we learned from Iraq. Secrecy led to malfeasance. It led to corrupt contracting.
We were poor. But my mom never accepted that. She worked hard to become a residential contractor - got her master's with honors at the University of New Orleans. I used to go to every class with her. Her father was my paternal figure.
When you go after someone who has a deep ideological belief set that is contradictory with your own, it's conversion. Conversion is hard. Conversion is miraculous. We have entire religions built around the idea of conversion. Politics is not a religion. Politics is about persuasion.
I suppose for me as an artist it wasn't always just about expressing my work; I really wanted, more than anything else, to contribute in some way to the culture that I was living in. It just seemed like a challenge to move it a little bit towards the way I thought it might be interesting to go.
Barack Obama's large contributor was Goldman Sachs - same thing on the Republican side. If you go to both their conventions, you see the same lobbyists paying off both sides so they win either way.
I am not suggesting that all those missionary organizations working in Haiti should pack up and go home, but I am urging them to understand that Haiti does not need clever Americans with newly contrived schemes for saving their country.
Speech controversies' will come and go as they always have, but our countries' shared values remain and Congress' bipartisan support for a strong U.S.-Israel partnership is ironclad.
