MY GREATEST fear is of something happening to my children. After the bombings in London, I was very aware that my wife was on her own at the time with our children. We are fortunate that we don’t live in an environment where suicide bombings are commonplace. How must parents feel when a suicide bomber kills little girls lined up to get on a bus home after school, as happens so often in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem?

I no longer worry about heights. I used to be really frightened of them until I went on an adventure course and they put a proper harness on me and I saw how strong they are. It made me realise how rational it is to be afraid of climbing ruins in Greece, where there are no proper barriers to save you from a fall.

From my parents I learnt to love. One of the most precious gifts that you can give is self-confidence, which is a by-product of love. My mother was an actor, extrovert, always laughing. My father was a TV producer, positive, always wanting us to have a good time.

The person I admire most is Martin Luther King. I have met people who worked with him and read all his letters, books and speeches. I think he was the most extraordinary person of the 20th century, because he preached non-violence in a society that is extremely violent because of the availability of guns. They tried to kill his children and he knew it was only a matter of time before they would kill him, yet he still preached peaceful protests against segregation. If he had not been around and Malcolm X had been a leader in those days, there would have been civil war.

I handle disappointment by spending time with my family. I used to make myself terribly unhappy just by brooding on things. Having children helps, because they are not bothered if people say that your programme is lousy.

When I am annoyed I calm down. I used to drink a bottle of wine, but that is not the way forward. It is the way to a coronary.

My favourite song is Bob Marley and the Wailers’ Redemption Song. Marley was extraordinarily talented and died very young. This song is almost poetry. The notion of redemption interests me very much. Is redemption something that happens only in novels, or does it happen in life?

My favourite book is Kaputt, by Curzio Malaparte, one of Italy’s most famous 20th-century writers. It is about his experiences during the Second World War when he met Himmler, among other top Nazis, and witnessed many atrocities. His descriptive passages are incredible. He was a journalist, like Tom Wolfe, whose A Man in Full and The Bonfire of the Vanities I also admire.

The trait I most admire in other people is taking responsibility. The people who don’t take the responsibility in television are the scary ones.

If I could introduce one law, it would be to make smoking illegal. The Government makes money from people killing themselves through smoking this drug; how insane is that? Both my parents died in their forties, my father of high blood pressure, which must have been exacerbated by his smoking. My mother died of an internal complaint, not cancer, but something that was also made worse by smoking.

My unfinished business is to get properly fit.

The one piece of advice I would like to pass on is: never give up.