Vanessa Mae

I started skiing around the same time as I began playing the piano, at around four, before moving to the violin at five.

People find it hard to understand how I can risk ruining my career as a musician by injuring myself on the slopes, but I've always been a tomboy.

But I don't mind, I'm a bit of a touring animal. When I'm on tour that is the greatest thrill for me, playing to a live audience.

I like villains because there's something so attractive about a committed person - they have a plan, an ideology, no matter how twisted. They're motivated.

It is hardly surprising that women concentrate on the way they look instead of what is in their minds since not much has been put in their minds to begin with.

The battles after the wars are over can be the toughest; there's no longer the public interest that accompanies, for good and for ill, the start of combat.