I'm a Canadian who can't vote, so far be it from me to speak for what Americans want. But, I am also a close observer of politics and media in this country, and the intersection of both - and how both intersect, and overlap with, each other.
I'm most comfortable at the intersection of technology and helping people; that's really what gets me going and gets me excited and what I get most passionate about.
The anger and the creativity are so closely intertwined with me, and there's plenty of anger left.
I remember, when I was doing 'Nicholas Nickleby', James Archer came to see me at the interval and said, 'My father would like to see you after the show.' It felt rather as if I had been summoned by the Queen, and I was cocky enough to think, 'Who the hell is he to summon me?'
For me, the way I go about training all of my clients is by using short bursts of interval training - it's the most effective for burning calories as well as for cardiovascular health and making you stronger.
Moving and motion tends to make things pop up. But things pop up for me, really, at just odd intervals or at random times that aren't really convenient, so I'm a big fan of the voice memo recorder on my phone. That's the only way I can remember things.
When I see something unjust, I have to intervene - it's hard for me to watch the underdog suffer.
You know, fate intervened. I went on to the DCMS committee to have a quieter life before the phone hacking scandal broke, and then ended up investigating the company that had libelled me previously when I was a minister.
I once did a three-hour interview with Radio Oxford only to be told the microphone hadn't picked me up.
I don't see the point of doing an interview unless you're going to share the things you learn in life and the mistakes you make. So to admit that I'm extremely human and have done some dark things I don't think makes me unusual or unusually dark. I think it actually is the right thing to do, and I'd like to think it's the nice thing to do.
What I've learned in my life, it's a very interesting social study for me, to go back and forth between being the guy at home and being the guy on the road and being the guy in studio and being the guy in the interview. The environment around you has so much to do with your character, and when I'm home, my character really changes quite a bit.
It's a complicated process being so bilingual. Sometimes it's a mere word or sentence that comes to me, if I'm writing the book in English, in French. It's not always easy to deal with. Sometimes even during an interview somebody can ask me a question in English that I want to answer in French and vice versa - that's the story of my life!
You know, sometimes an interviewer will look at me and say - you're bright! They're actually surprised I might be bright.
Sometimes an interviewer will look at me and say, 'You're bright!' They're actually surprised I might be bright.
'Tell me about yourself.' When interviewers ask this, they don't want to hear about everything that has happened in your life; the interviewer's objective is to see how you respond to this vague yet personal question.
I'm not a go-in-for-the-kill kind of interviewer. It's a great thing to me, that kind of interviewer, but I'm not it. It doesn't play to my strengths at all. I like to interview people who are interested in telling their story and tell it as truthfully as they can.
Most of the people interviewing me are far more square than me. I think it's the ET thing. I'm sitting there, my hair is combed, and I'm in a suit.
I couldn't be touring unless my husband was on the road with me, taking care of our son while I'm onstage and doing interviews.
On the rare occasions when I spend a night in Oxford, the keeping of the hours by the clock towers in New College, and Merton, and the great booming of Tom tolling 101 times at 9 pm at Christ Church are inextricably interwoven with memories and regrets and lost joys. The sound almost sends me mad, so intense are the feelings it evokes.
It so fascinates me how we always laugh when somebody falls on a banana peel, how comedy and injury are often so interwoven. I've always been a sucker for that.
