I worked with Stanley Kubrick for almost a year back in 1990, trying to develop the screen story for his project 'Artificial Intelligence,' which is about a robot boy who wishes to become a real boy, a future scientific fairy tale inspired in the myth of Pinocchio.
People with a lot of money aren't in the business of throwing it away, and those paying footballers' wages, organising parking spaces for dead sharks, and even, dare I say it, buying iPads, are doing it because, for them, it's worth the money.
I think it's safe to say that 'manliness' was a common theme in my upbringing. It was an assumed status, but - and here's the important bit - it was the Rudyard Kipling kind. The emphasis was on gentlemanly conduct, sportsmanship, fairness and stoicism.
The only time I even entertain the tiniest element of religion is for Christmas carols.
The fact is that most 'Irish-Americans', in spite of dropping the word 'Irish' into half of all sentences, couldn't find Europe on an atlas, let alone Ireland.
Tokyo in the late 1960s seemed to be like one of the futures that science fiction presents. Here was the proto- super-technology of the future, electronically, robotically, blahblahblah, intercut with traditional Japanese cultural patterns, Shinto patterns.
Basically, I tend to see the world differently to other people, and I write books and stories to alter the imagination of people so that they also see the world in a different way.
I think we are living in paradise with regards to the ways we can amuse ourselves, communicate. We have such a richness of possibilities.
It's bad enough being conned into singing an anti-war message by John Lennon when you think you're just wishing everyone a merry Christmas.
Warwick Davies is a cracking actor. The opening scene in the last 'Harry Potter' film, where he plays a captured Griphook, is mesmerising. His pacing is sublime, and the menace and regret he builds into the scene is fantastic.
Every joke in 'The Office' was unexpected. I cringed; I could hardly look. I cried with laughter.
I'm going to do the old 'plaster removal' technique and just get the pain over with in one go: 'Life's Too Short' isn't funny to me.
My wife will automatically quote and compare the price of diesel at every petrol station we drive by, like she's got oil-based Tourette's.
My father-in-law just happens to be a global procurement guru. Now retired, he was the global head of procurement for some of the biggest companies in the world as well as our very own treasury.
That iPad you just bought. Do you care that it cost a few pence to manufacture? No. It's cost you several hundred pounds because somebody else was willing to pay that much for it. If they weren't... it wouldn't.
I'm working class. Not because my family have always been skint or because I'm from the grim north, but because I am from a class of people who believe in work. In paying their way.
When I go to the interviews and sit before a prospective employer, I'm going to try and look as employable as I can.
I believe I've got the best of both worlds - a modern man with old fashioned values. I'm happy to be a house husband but won't let my wife carry her own bag.
Dad's funeral was standing room only; most in attendance were strangers to me. At the back, a lone Marine stood silently, then left. People told me he'd saved their life or helped them in their darkest hour.
