If my future were determined just by my performance on a standardized test I wouldn't be here. I guarantee you that.

And I think that being able to make people laugh and write a book that's funny makes the information go down a lot easier and it makes it a lot more fun to read easier to understand and often stronger. So there's all kinds of advantages to it.

'Funny People' is my favorite performance of myself to date. Even though it's a comedy and there are serious moments I really felt like Leo felt like a real person. It didn't feel like I was playing myself. Whether it's a comedy or drama I just try to make it as realistic as possible.

Queer Eye for the Straight Guy is a form of service journalism. To be successful I think it has to be a combination of a good story it has to be funny and it also needs to be packed with useful information.

My last public performance for money was in 1967. For free it was 1972 with the exception of two little one-shot one-song things. But that's just for friends out of friendship for the people involved and also because it was fun.

To avoid being mistaken for a sellout I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets.

But in the first Gulf war the United Kingdom was not under any threat from Iraq and is still less so in the second one. Then there is no justification for obstructing freedom of information particularly as nations have a right to know what their soldiers are being used for.

I like the freedom of podcasting. With podcasting you can really mess around with the form and the format. You can do as much time as you like without having to pause for commercials.

The road to freedom lies not through mysteries or occult performances but through the intelligent use of natural forces and laws.

Now an embryo may seem like some scientific or laboratory term but in fact the embryo contains the unique information that defines a person. All you add is food and climate control and some time and the embryo becomes you or me.

Hopefully imparting what's important to me respect for the food and that information about the purveyors people will realize that for a restaurant to be good so many pieces have to come together.

While weight loss is important what's more important is the quality of food you put in your body - food is information that quickly changes your metabolism and genes.

Families are struggling against a tide of junk information on junk food.

To beat the market you'll have to invest serious bucks to dig up information no one else has yet.

Why do people do things that they fear? It may be that the fear contains information. Something can be interesting if you get to the other side of that fear.

If you have stage fright it never goes away. But then I wonder: is the key to that magical performance because of the fear?

I know I had my equivalents in Adrian Lester and Lenny James when I was at drama school. I remember David Harewood doing 'Othello' at the National and Adrian Lester having done Cheek by Jowl's famous 'As You Like It and Company' at the Donmar. Not necessarily performances I saw but just the fact they happened was massively encouraging.

My wife Elizabeth and I started The Really Terrible Orchestra for people like us who are pretty hopeless musicians who would like to play in an orchestra. It has been a great success. We give performances we've become the most famous bad orchestra in the world.

We do not always appreciate the role the Queen has played in one of the most significant changes in the past 60 years: the transformation of Britain into a multi-ethnic multi-faith society. No one does interfaith better than the Royal family and it starts with the Queen herself.

It's a little known fact that one in three family pets gets lost during its lifetime and approximately 9 million pets enter shelters each year. That's why it's a wonderful thing to get your pet microchipped and registered with your contact information because then they can be located and the owners can track where their pets are.

For those who are able to work work has to be seen as the best route out of poverty. For work is not just about more money - it is transformative. It's about taking responsibility for yourself and your family.

There is an overwhelming amount of information available to us all on the web each day not to mention what is shared with us by our family friends fans and followers. This necessitates the need to filter through all that information and to decide for ourselves where to put our attention.

The United States have fulfilled in good faith all their treaty stipulations with the Indian tribes and have in every other instance insisted upon a like performance of their obligations.

The Soviet Union did not achieve victory over the West so was my information inadequate to help them to victory or did it play no particular role in their failure to achieve victory?