The Doctor in Doctor Who. I still do.

At the end he asked me if I would like to go into the Army. I thought it would be splendid to command an Army, so I said 'Yes' at once: and immediately I was taken at my word. ... I was told later that he had only come to the conclusion that I was not clever enough to go to the Bar. However that may be, the toy soldiers turned the current of my life.

A cellist, inspired by my mum and dad’s friendship with Jacqueline du Pré, and seeing a documentary about her.

An actor or a nun.

Fame. The upside is not worth the downside – you can’t turn fame on and off, and have privacy.

I think I’d just like to be chilling out really, so it’s like real summer family holidays where the most important things to decide are what are you going to have for breakfast, what are you going to have for lunch, what beach are you going to, and what are you going to have for dinner.

In the 1990s in New Jersey, being driven to a radio station early one morning. Our driver fell asleep and we were on the other side of a dual carriageway with cars coming at us. We all screamed and banged on the seat, and he woke up and pulled the car back across.

My wife, because she manages me and sometimes there isn’t time for niceties and we have to talk in a language that isn’t very marriage-like.

I’d like to go all melodramatic and have Vide cor Meum by Patrick Cassidy from Kingdom Of Heaven. It’s also in another Ridley Scott movie, Hannibal. It’s an operatic piece and absolutely amazing. Obviously Ridley Scott thinks so, too..

I haven’t really had a job. I used to work at my dad’s garden centre in my late teens, but it was just messing around.