Most people assume that when you go to court and win your case that you are guaranteed to get your money. Sadly, this isn't always the case.

Learning about crime in great detail forces us to ask ourselves how it happened, how the victims and perpetrators got to that point, how the law works, how the police force functions.

I can conduct and play musical instruments, but dancers' counting is different - they only go to eight beats, which doesn't relate to a bar.

Even my trolls have started taking the trouble to spell their Tweets correctly, which is thoughtful.

I celebrate Christmas with wilful glee.

I give celebrity my undivided indifference. Now that it's here, there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. And people who complain about celebrity and any kind of privilege are, all of them, whinging morons, and they should keep their first-world problems to themselves. I feel very strongly about that.

Never trust people; always trust paper. I'd marry a piece of paper if I could.

We need to be able to turn to our immediate circle to ascertain whether our internal checks and balances are functional and to be able to rely on them to point out gross errors.

My grandfather wanted to remind us that freedom of expression is the fundamental ingredient for democracy, and all the rest is detail. It is the scaffolding around which every other freedom is based.

I used to deal with high-profile criminal cases that were covered extensively in the media, and one of the things I quickly appreciated was there was a gulf between what really took place in the middle of a case, the impact on victims, the effect on the police and how they solved crimes, and the way it was reported.