A celebrity can gain attention in our otherwise busy lives. And celebrity sells.
Gavin Esler
Every year I go to Denver, usually between June and August. I hire a car and head up to the Rocky Mountain National Park, about a three-hour drive. It's my idea of heaven on earth and just talking about it puts me in a good mood.
My taste in coffee has got better with age, and so has my taste in music.
I was going to do medicine at Edinburgh University - when I was three weeks old I nearly died, but they did an operation and I survived. It was a huge thing for my family - I was the first-born - and doctors were heroes, so I wanted to join them.
Rich, poor, white, people of colour, are all equally irreplaceable.
In the 2016 U.S. presidential election, celebrity endorsements possibly damaged Hillary Clinton, since they allowed Donald Trump to emphasise that she was part of an out-of-touch elite. That is ironic, given that Mr Trump owed his election victory to his own celebrity status on a TV reality show.
My idea of heaven is being in Arizona, stuck up a mountain - somewhere where there are no phones.
When I visit universities in the U.A.E., the U.S. and across Europe, I see the faces of the leaders of tomorrow.
I have my mother's nose and my father's bone structure, which I've passed on to my children. My eldest daughter and my mother, when she was young, could be sisters.
The Cold War, Bosnia and Ukraine remind us that peace is fragile. Iraq and Syria remind us that no society or culture is immune from conflict.
At seven years old, I won a scholarship to George Heriot's School, an independent school in Edinburgh, and I was there until I was 17.
The U.S. Constitution has absorbed the end of slavery, the Civil War, Civil Rights and Watergate.
Compromise disappoints those who buy into the most ambitious and simplistic populist slogans.
For me, prog rock has always been essentially British. It combines all our great and eccentric genius. We are not hung up on categories, rules and classification. We love people who break the mould, challenge us and make us think differently.
Brexit is turning out to be a really really bad meal. We ordered steak and chips and we've now got some raw chicken that smells bad.
A political and economic system that only works for a small group at the top is a system that needs to change.
Doctors, dentists and nurses commonly take out malpractice insurance to pay for lawsuits. The trend has expanded to include hairdressers, accountants, vets, sports umpires and members of the clergy, all fearful of being sued for wrongful action or advice.
Let me say it up front: I don't like bad hair or capes. I'm not into witches, warlocks or elves. I would never try to claim prog rock is cool. But I love it. And I know I'm not the only one.
World leaders and major political figures have often had delusions of grandeur.
In Britain, politicians who openly discuss their spirituality are about as welcome as Jehovah' s Witnesses on the doorstep, and the British associate the mixture of politics and religion as a heady cocktail best reserved for the mass irrationality of Northern Ireland, Iran, Kashmir, and the Middle East.
International politics attracts politicians who talk a good game, but whose achievements are often slender.
Amateurism has its place in government, in journalism and also on the tennis court, but lack of expertise means politicians routinely promise far more than they achieve.
From Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos to Google and Facebook, many of America's greatest entrepreneurs, musicians, movie directors and novelists are world beaters.
There are people who appear on television who are paid for by shadowy think tanks whose financing they won't come clean about.
If someone appears on television and makes a comment, and we quote that comment, we are being accurate. But are we actually being sensible if we don't know if that comment is based on any facts whatsoever? It is something that journalists have to be much more aware of.
During my childhood in the Cold War, my family saw America as a great ally in our common struggle to keep back Soviet communism.
I spent the first three years of my life with my parents, grandmother and two aunties in a tiny council house in Glasgow.
With Bill Clinton, his lawyers always wanted him to say nothing about the Lewinsky scandal. Defendant Clinton had the right to remain silent. But President Clinton had a completely different need - political survival. That meant, in the end, that he needed to trumpet his supposed innocence and talk publicly to the American people.
From the moment he took the oath of office in 1993 until he left the White House in 2001, Bill Clinton was a paradox in power. He presided over the United States prosperous and at peace - but never at peace with itself.
The country I live in is never clear about its name. My passport says 'the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland,' and citizens of the U.K. may call themselves British, English, Scottish, Welsh or from Northern Ireland.
Funerals should celebrate a life.
Maybe because I've worked in the BBC for so long I am completely allergic to meetings.
Privacy is dead. We live in a world of instantaneous, globalised gossip. The idea that there is a 'private' sphere and a 'public' sphere for world leaders, politicians or anyone in the public eye is slowly disintegrating. The death of privacy will have a profound effect on who our leaders will be in the future.
Democratic government is difficult. It is much more difficult than populists claim. It's not like running a business or a police force. It demands compromise.
The thing I love most about going to the Rocky Mountain National Park is that mobile phones don't work, and there's no electricity and no TV.
My first day at Duddingston Primary is probably my first memory.
Viewers don't like rudeness, but they like us to be persistent.
We're never encouraged by the producers to ask questions in any way. The most important thing to be is authentic and to be yourself. If I feel someone has answered a question then I'll move on. If I feel it's important enough, I will pursue the question.
I have a long connection with Kent and Canterbury and I hope to help other young men and women to achieve their ambitions through a wonderful university experience.
Maybe I should declare a bias. I like Americans. Always have. Always will.
Personally, I hope that we British continue to criticise America - just as I hope Americans will criticise us. That is what friends do.
Americans, apparently, either do nothing about the world's problems, in which case they are ignorant and isolationist, selfish and gutless, or they try to do something about the world's problems, in which case they are arrogant and naive, greedy and bullying.
There is a common British delusion that we 'understand' America. We don't. Watching 'Friends' listening to Bruce Springsteen, eating at McDonald's and visiting Disneyland does not do it.
A British politician who cloaks himself in the mantle of God is immediately regarded with suspicion.
The very idea of a Party of God, Hizbollah, puts the fear of God into British hearts.
American elections have usually turned on the issues of war, peace and the economy.
Ronald Reagan offered us an international vision divided between the free world and the evil empire. Even if this was a cartoonish view, it helped us make sense of everything from Star Wars to industrial policy.
What mattered in the cold war was weight - how big are your missiles? How heavy are your tanks? What matters in globalisation is speed. How fast is your modem? How good are you communications?
Mini-skirts, Prada and Agnes B are for New York and L.A. Washington is more America's equivalent of Marks & Spencer.
Public displays of puritanical religiosity mask the private perversions of the real Washington behind closed doors.
