As I wrote I began to see more strongly that there were inescapable analogies. You couldn't really live through the '80s without feeling how crass and distasteful some of the economic doctrines were. The slave trade is a perfect model for that kind of total devotion to the profit motive without reckoning the human consequences.
Nationality is the miracle of political independence; race is the principle of physical analogy.
People don't understand the analogy of football and acting, but there's a great deal of it that's the same. You get dressed in the room, and you think you've got it all prepared, and later on in the game you wish you had put on more pads 'cause they're just kicking the hell out of you. God almighty, I've been beat up by the best.
I use a lot of film images, analogies, and imagination.
If the building is on fire and the person decides to stay in there, I don't run in there and get him out. If you see them breaking the glass, if you see them struggling and trying to get out - that's my analogy of how I help out the guys in the league and the kids that really, really need help.
I have always been averse to theorizing about the art or craft of biography. Like Disraeli's biographer, Lord Blake, who offers the cautionary analogy of the biographical centipede unsure of her next step because of too much cerebration, I have made it my practice to let the facts find the theory.
My mental analogy for TalkTalk is an ageing Ford Cortina going flat out in the fast lane of the M4 in the pouring rain. We are always hammering along faster than anybody thinks is sensible, with things not quite working, but huge enthusiasm.
One good analogy is worth three hours discussion.
I tend to approach things from a physics framework. And physics teaches you to reason from first principles rather than by analogy.
Sometimes I make an analogy that each scientific paper is like putting out another record. And some people have careers that are nothing but a one-hit wonder. And then there are people who are only appreciated by aficionados but largely forgotten by the wider community.
