It is actually getting much harder for someone from an ordinary background to break through the ranks. In the period from 1964 to 1997, every single Prime Minister - from Harold Wilson to John Major - was the product of a state school.
I'm not arguing for a return to the grammar school system, but there must be a way of identifying bright kids from ordinary backgrounds and giving them a world-class education.
The Margaret Thatchers of this country made it through - like I did - because of the grammar school system, which gave the opportunity of a lifetime to working-class kids. It put them on a level playing field with the privately educated kids, and opened up the top universities to them.
There are two ways you can buy an education in this country. You can pay the fees. Or you can cheat and buy a house in an area where there's a good school.
You have to live and breathe Scotland if you're 'Scotsman' editor.
Look, I don't want to edit the 'Scotsman.' I have too many other things going on. I have four newspapers to run and two dot com companies going gangbusters.
I spend a lot of time in New York.
The Scotsman' is a cheerleader for devolution.
Class and the snobbery it provokes still matter far too much in Britain, but we are a far more mobile society than we used to be.
When one English person speaks, another one immediately classifies him. No class system in the world is so audible, which is also why it is so pernicious and enduring.
Americans have this patrician attitude that they have a God-given right to produce these boring newspapers and not be challenged to do it. 'The New York Times' really thinks it's the BBC.
Many U.S. Sunday papers are monopolies, and their contents can be an extension of the daily.
The Sunday paper is an odd British cultural tradition.
I never set out to get married and the way things have worked out I never have.
I don't fall in love easily... But I do fall in love.
People know more about my views than they do about most BBC presenters because I had a life before becoming a BBC presenter.
Well, one person whose company I enjoy is Charlie Whelan. He and I get on really well together.
That's the only time when newspapers have some influence, when they are pushing the British public in a direction they are already minded to go.
Rupert Murdoch has been around since the dinosaurs. He knows how to get around any independent board - as he did with me, and as he's done with other editors as well.
The Sun' and the 'News of the World' fell in line behind New Labour in the run up to the 1997 election, 'The Times' stayed broadly neutral and 'The Sunday Times' unenthusiastically Tory. After the election, 'The Times' quickly fell in line as the New Labour house journal.
