Sophie Ellis-Bextor

Philately is normally a boys' hobby but for some reason it was in vogue at my junior school. Between the ages of eight and ten I collected avidly. I'd pore over my Stanley Gibbons book, obsessively checking my collection's value. I always hoped I'd stumble across a really valuable one, a Penny Black or an Inverted Jenny, but it wasn't to be.

To ask questions can become the laziest and wobbliest occupation of a mind, but when you must yourself answer the problem that you have posed, you will meditate your question with care and frame it with precision.