The brain doesn't make a distinction about whether it's work or home. The key is to practice, practice, practice so that the skills become spontaneous and automatic.

You should never place your value as a human being on results. You don't control the results of the game – people get lucky or go bankrupt. Also, what happens when you achieve your result? What long-term satisfaction does that bring you?

I do not talk about life and death – I talk about birth and death, they are opposites, and life is simply a continuum of both, and you cannot have one without the other.

Running a business is a challenging job, but until relatively recently, that job was simplified to the extent that you had one target – make as much money as you can for the shareholders. Now, you have to balance a multitude of targets which makes it much more challenging.

the printing press helped democratise Europe by providing space for discussion and agreement among politically engaged citizens, often before the state had fully democratised.

As comedians, our main charity engagement for such a long time had been the tradition of the Secret Policeman's Ball, a way of saying comedians care… they'll be as funny as they can…. they'll make money for a cause… but the event had close to no connection with the cause at all! When I did Comic Relief, the aim was to be as funny as possible, to get as much of an audience as possible, and leverage the fact that comedians are often seen as people's friends, and normal people, not as intellectuals.

For me it is extremely important that commercial interests and social benefits are not mutually exclusive, but that they can complement each other wonderfully so I always look out for products that are innovative, forward-thinking and offer a true value for society.

If you have a national or multinational brand, your customers are as diverse as the human population. If you're smart, you realise that you need people in your business who can relate to all those different kinds of people. This is actually one of the smartest supports for diversity and inclusion in the workplace.

I think there was a moment around 2009 to 2011 when states got caught off guard a little. They didn't realise social media had the potential it did. And then I think it didn't take very long for authoritarian regimes to get smart and realise they could actually use these tools to stay in power.

Another hugely common mistake is optimising your business for investors, and not customers and employees. If you don't believe me, look at the fact that consulting businesses have a 5 year survival rate of 60% and venture backed businesses, less than 10%.

Six years ago, I got a phone call in Boston, an investor asked me what I thought about cultured meat? ..my answer was that it's probably one of the stupidest ideas I've ever heard in my life.!

Most people think of entrepreneurs as someone who starts a company, but to me? Entrepreneurship is really about problem solving. People can (roughly) be divided into three categories. The first category are people who can tell you all the problems in the world! The second group of people are those who invent, innovate and find solutions to these problems. The third group, entrepreneurs, are those people who don't talk about the problem or solution but go out and solve it.