The key thing about me is that I’m really not very interesting.
The two questions that anyone ever asks me are: ‘Are house prices going to go down?’ and ‘Is it a good time to fix my mortgage rate?’
What is so striking about Liberia is that in a place where there is so much to be done, I have never seen so many people with nothing to do.
In principle, there are only three main components of spending that much matter to monetary policy: consumer spending, business investment and exports and trade.
It’s amazing, if you know what you want to say, how fast it is to write.
I don’t want to sound like ‘chirpy Evan’ who’s just bouncing around with his unrealistic views and doesn’t understand what’s going on.
I swing both ways. I can see things from a kind of conservative point of view and from a more socially liberal or left-wing point of view.
We are more likely to cheat if we see others doing so. We tend to conform to accepted norms of reasonable behaviour, rather than adhere to strict rules.
Being funny, it turns out, is like being a bank. It’s a confidence trick. As long as everyone believes in you, you are fine.
Mistakes are nothing to be ashamed of.
I don’t particularly like going on about being gay or making a big thing about it, but I think it’s a bit of a pain to be secretive about it.
Even the ‘Today’ programme involves a balance between the worthy-but-heavy items with the worthless-but-entertainingly-light ones.
We all know that Americans love their statistics – in sport, obviously. And in finance too.
I’ve never enjoyed sleep as much until I got the ‘Today’ job. There is something about early sleep that’s much better than late sleep. I feel myself going to sleep; I don’t just plonk my head on the pillow. It’s a sort of winding-down thing.
For years, we’ve grown dependant on American consumers as the world’s spenders of last resort. They’ve kept Europe out of recession, allowed China to industrialise, and prevented global deflation. But at the same time, they’ve not been looking after their own futures.
For me, the main principle for broadcasters has to be that if people stand to benefit from an interview, they should be prepared to face some downside as well.
But sometimes it’s good to dare yourself to do the unthinkable. And rather than stand in front of an audience with no clothes on, I decided to have a go at stand-up comedy.
It doesn’t annoy me but I think of myself as a presenter who is gay, rather than a gay presenter. It’s a subtle distinction, but that’s how I view it.
Britain, however, has ended up specializing in the ones you don’t see as much of: defense aerospace, making drive shafts for cars, pills and drugs, designing chips that go into 94 percent of the world’s mobile phones.
Interest rate cuts have an effect in stimulating an economy by directly or indirectly making someone, somewhere, spend more than they otherwise would. That extra spending increases demand and ensures that we all carry on with work to do, without us having to slash our prices or our wrists.