Now I'm a failed political consultant. But sometimes fiction has a way of capturing people's imagination in a way that non-fiction doesn't. Conservatives typically haven't written much fiction - specifically political thrillers - over the years to educate inspire and mobilize people on issues of great import but we ought to.

Writing a novel is not merely going on a shopping expedition across the border to an unreal land: it is hours and years spent in the factories the streets the cathedrals of the imagination.

With the world as it now presents itself there is something perverse and probably dysfunctional about a person who stays in the same house for 40 years. What about the expanding family syndrome the school-lottery migration the property portfolio neurosis? Have you no imagination?

No film has captivated my imagination more than 'King Kong.' I'm making movies today because I saw this film when I was 9 years old.

We didn't have television until I was about eight years old so it was either the movies or radio. A lot of radio drama. That was our television you know. We had to use our imagination. So it was really those two things and the comics that I immersed myself in as a child.

I had been a reporter for 15 years when I set out to write my first novel. I knew how to research an article or profile a subject - skills that I assumed would be useless when it came to fiction. It was from my imagination that the characters in my story would emerge.

In my imagination yes I remember when I was six years old I was conducting all this concert in my house. But now it's real.

Just about this time when in imagination I was so great a warrior I had good use in real life for more strength as I was no longer taken to school by the nurse but instead had myself to protect my brother two years my junior.

I've been working on the soprano saxophone for 40 years and the possibilities are astounding. It's up to you the only limit is the imagination.

Another side to me is this very sexual being. When I look back on my life it's always been there. It's been there since I was 10 years old having the imagination that I had.

I was a precocious only child and then I went through a fat awkward stage for several years so I learned to fall back on my humor and personality when I was growing up. It's how you survive so I think it was more of a natural progression for me developing into comedy.

I've always chosen my band members based on their sense of humor. It might sound stupid but it means not only are they fun to live with on a tour bus for years but humor implies intelligence.

Sometimes it takes ten seconds to see some humor in your dilemmas sometimes ten years.

Those years on the golf course as a caddie boy those people were something. They were vulgar some were alcoholics racist they were very difficult people to deal with. A lot of them didn't have a sense of humor.

Tony and I had a good on and off screen relationship we are two very different people but we did share a sense of humor we now live in different parts of the world but when we find ourselves in the same place it is more or less as if there had been no years in between.

Humor starts like a wildfire but then continues on smoldering smoldering for years.

I still have I hope a lot of years and there are still a lot of things I want to do.

I am not the same man I was 35 years ago. And I hope that five years and ten years from now I'll be a better man a more mature man a wiser man a more humble man and a more spirited man to serve the good of my people and the good of humanity.

Well I certainly have learned and I hope I'm moving on and certainly two years of prison was a terrible punishment.

I hope that at the end of the seven years people will say that I have been of some inspirational value to them at home in terms of inclusiveness and abroad I look forward to representing Ireland.

I hope that when I'm 80 years old people will still be talking about my wedding.

You promised to take care of me and not to turn your back on me. How is it possible that you never wrote to me even once and you never came back to see me? Do you think that it is fun for me to spend months even years without any news without any hope!

I'm moving on. I should have made that clear when I made the announcement. I guess I wasn't clear. If people think you're leaving a show after all these years you might be retiring. So I understand where they're coming from but I should have impressed the fact that I hope I'm just moving on right now.

Well I've been reading a lot about the fifty years since the Second World War about Western foreign policy and all that. I try not to let it get to me but sometimes I just think that there's no hope.