When I left drama school, I thought I was going to work at the Royal Court and tell stories about political injustice. I got cast in ITV murder mysteries.

Plenty of matches got away, but there’s nothing I can do about it, so why worry?

When I was a 26-year-old news correspondent, the head of BBC news gathering, Chris Cramer, refused to let me take up a six-month attachment on the foreign affairs programme Correspondent. He said: “I think it’s too soon; you could do it later.” He’d never have said that to a man.

Citizens around the world blaming others for their personal disappointments, othering them, labelling them, terrorising them with hate-filled rhetoric and shutting the doors of their hearts.

Amazing Grace, on bagpipes.

I had a cafeteria job, serving food, and some people were really nasty. There was a stack of nice, cool plates, and a stack of hotter plates that had just come out of the kitchen. So, if a person was an arsehole, I’d hand them a hot plate with a smile and watch them deal with it.

My teenage years in the Runaways: I was still naive enough to think good things about the world and life and people, and I was having fun playing rock’n’roll around the world, living the dream.

Right after 9/11, Kenny and I went to perform for the troops in Pakistan and Uzbekistan. As we were flying in, an electronic voice went off: “Warning: missile launch! Warning: missile launch!” The Taliban had fired a rocket at us. I was waiting to see the back of the plane blow up, but it didn’t and we landed.

My electric car: it’s a hybrid Cadillac.

An astronaut, an archaeologist, an actor, and a musician.