“I tried to leave the city once, for one of those other places. And, my God, the silence. I could hear myself think, and found that I wasn’t. I am not designed to be lonely as a cloud.”

My sister’s also very, very competitive but she is more concerned than I am with being liked. So she hides it away. I try to make my competitiveness part of my charm.

My time in Paris was an education in both the grimness of a relentless, grinding day job and the joys of nights in glittering restaurants.

The first thing I remember is that my dad had a big iron Olivetti typewriter and he worked all night.

The good fortune of my life, which has been to turn those glittering nights into my job, all came from there.

I sleep nine hours every night, I have a little nap after lunch, and, if I’m going out for dinner, I sneak in an extra one before I head out.

People think you get paid millions by the BBC if you’re famous, but me? Me, I’m in the Premier Inn in Gillingham.

I have Gordon Ramsay to thank for my TV career because Channel 4 spent a long time trying to find him a sidekick for ‘The F Word’, then he suggested me, knowing I’d stand up to him.

It doesn’t matter how much of a hurry you think you are in. Be one of the people for whom ten minutes does not make a difference.

I think unionization of labour is a great thing.

I always feel quite Jewish but I used to deny it until I was in my twenties.

Personally I ride a bicycle, travel by train and bus and campaign tirelessly for a car taxation system that will hammer ignorant, selfish, petty, fat, spoilt, stupid car abusers into giving up their addiction and walking.

I’m just a bit frustrated that in London we make such an effort to ape the New York restaurant scene. I have good friends who ape the New York restaurant scene and do it brilliantly. None of them would claim that the primary reason for going to their restaurant was the food.

As a broadly left-wing, environmentally aware urban believer in anthropogenic global warming, I am all for a total ban on motor vehicles.

How clever am I? I’m really quite clever. I mean, look, I’ve got a first-class degree from Oxford.

My dad is the best and funniest newspaper columnist. There is nobody anywhere near as good.

Gradually, I developed opinions about food, and my French friends taught me that you have to complain in a restaurant.

Otherwise, I think the building can be bigger, larger, and the city can be much more crazy. The problem is the government structure is so deadly stupid, not really solving problems but creating a lot of problems itself every day.

I don’t care if this is a great cultural event or a national symbol. It has nothing to do with me. It deals with the city.

In my case, I was stuck there for quite a while. New York is large enough to be a very abstract city, so nobody cares.

You can put city polish on a man, but by golly, it seems you can’t ever rub it off him.

A country-bred man can always learn to get on with city people, but a town-bred fellah never gets the real hang of the country.

No one has imagined us. We want to live like trees, sycamores blazing through the sulfuric air, dappled with scars, still exuberantly budding, our animal passion rooted in the city.

Not houses finely roofed or the stones of walls well builded, nay nor canals and dockyards make the city, but men able to use their opportunity.

Not well-built walls, but brave citizens are the bulwark of the city.