There is an awful lot of pious theatre at the moment, where you go to have what you already believed reinforced.

Visibility doesn’t equal power.

I’m actually suspicious of people who have a lot of friends.

I don’t like live music. (I know that is a very despicable opinion.) I love great recordings.

Sitting down to supper with family and close friends, either in my garden or on my boat.

I try to be a Sherlock Holmes of botany. It's not enough to enjoy plants – I want to know why they are wilting, to work things out.

I wish school career advisers were more aware of horticulture. They imagine it's just going out into public parks and pulling weeds up, not a career. But there is garden design, horticultural research, conservation – a whole gamut of angles which are overlooked.

Eric Idle’s Always Look on the Bright Side of Life. That’s me, really.

Rudeness, arrogance and inability to compromise.

I'm a cryer. The family has a competition to see who can get me going at Christmas. The last time I blubbed was on my birthday, when my daughter gave me a framed photo of my 15-month-old grandson Hugo, but I have been known to shed a tear at The Railway Children or Pretty Woman.