You can be involved in media, and you can be involved in all the handbag hurling that goes along with it, and it's a different world.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I'm in politics to change things - if possible, for the better. I was a journalist for a long time, but I had a kind of midlife crisis, and I decided I needed to do something to get on the pitch and stop endlessly kicking over other peoples' sandcastles.
If you're in the media, particularly newspapers, you are in the thick of all the interesting things that are going on in a community, and I can't imagine any other life that one would want to dedicate oneself to.
People say I manipulate the media. Well, duh. We live in a media culture, so why on earth wouldn't I?
Sports movies are often very good at dramatizing the intersection of public and private realms: the body politic.
I've been involved in sport right through my life.
I am aware it's easy and may be fashionable to pose with a slum child, and the irony of getting the media along means that it can come across as disingenuous. But you take these things on board, and you hope you mean it whenever you get stuck into something.
Involvement in public affairs is a legitimate use of celebrity.
I'm obsessed with media and the way audiences can become creative participants.
I really got to a point where I thought maybe I would want to be involved politically.
In journalism, as in politics, other people's lives are a currency to be bartered on behalf of notoriety and influence.