“But still I can never shake the feeling that buses are somehow beneath me. Which is why I have a rule regarding their use: I never, ever run for one. And nor should you.”

My dad was very successful as a journalist, so I didn’t want to be one. I wanted to be a novelist.

When I tell people I spent almost a year in Paris, I know they imagine something out of a Woody Allen movie, which it wasn’t, of course. I was just working in a clothes shop, but I was aware that it was exciting.

Have you ever been to the countryside? It’s so small. And there’s nothing to do.

Mineral water is a preposterous vanity, either bottled in glass which is stupidly heavy to freight, or in plastic that ends up in one of the plastic patches the size of Texas occupying our oceans.

Gentile smoked salmon is all… muscular and smells of smoke. It’s not very fatty. They don’t understand – smoked salmon should be almost spreadable! So you give them the real stuff and they can’t believe how delicious it is.

People like me make modern life intolerable.

He was a staffer at Punch but in the evening he wrote columns for the Evening Standard and The Times.

I have a tailor now, I have a doctor, a wine merchant, a jeweller, a gardener, a cleaner, and a nanny. It was clearly ridiculous that I did not have a hairdresser. So I got one.

I had become mean and stupid and deliberately hurtful because that is what is expected of restaurant critics. Of critics in general.

The world’s most competitive man, my dad. Wouldn’t let us win at Monopoly… he wouldn’t cut any slack for his children.

Instant gratification is bringing this planet to its knees.

All I care about is that people who like me think I’m funny. I get on with writing pretty straight-down the line, old-fashioned stuff.

My dad Alan loved Westerns and we watched them together when there wasn’t much else on TV. I had toy cowboys I’d call Richard Widmark or Gregory Peck and we’d restage the Battle of the Alamo.

Not since Ancient Greece have cities been thought of as the ideal living environment for humans. And that was so long ago it predates the invention of trousers.

I have quite good general knowledge and I had a very drilled education from an early age. I do know more than most people.

I come from a country where there’s a reputation for bad press.

I’m not going to hurt her. I know she’s special and I tried to stay away, but when I’m with I don’t feel so cold and alone.

Anything I’ve not experienced I do not look to for a subject. I have to feel it.

I used to wanna rap like Jay-Z, Now I feel I could run laps around Jay-Z, Nas ain’t seen nothing this nasty, B.I.G. & Pac got it coming when I pass too. You got the mic, I ain’t the one you wanna pass to

I feel very competitive with Robert Morse off-set. We often duke it out. He always wins.

I’m at a place in my life where I do finally feel, at least most of the time, that I know who I am and I’m comfortable with the person that I am.

I love stories that put you on the edge of your seat and make you feel something.

I think most artists feel like they’re outside society – no matter how many accolades they receive, or how much money is in your bank account, whatever is going on in your life on the professional side.

If people invited Muslims into their home every week by way of a TV show would go a long way to making people feel comfortable with Muslims and countering misconceptions about who we are. Plus, of course, that will make it easier for us to impose sharia law across America.