Jeremy Hunt

They say that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger and I've learnt a great deal, but you can never predict the future, so the best thing is just to do whatever you're asked to do to the best of your ability.

I've noticed that a lot of people, subsequently, when they introduce me are very careful not to say the Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt. A lot more people are saying Jeremy Hunt, Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport.

All I can do is advocate changes at the BBC while respecting editorial independence upon which the success of the BBC rests. I can't do anything that requires the BBC to pay certain people certain amounts.

It is only when you watch the dense mass of thousands of ants, crowded together around the Hill, blackening the ground, that you begin to see the whole beast, and now you observe it thinking, planning, calculating. It is an intelligence, a kind of live computer, with crawling bits for its wits.

And I think that still is true of this business - which is basically research and development - that you probably spend more time in planning and training and designing for things to go wrong, and how you cope with them, than you do for things to go right.