Psychologically, it's what I love to be. Tearing apart a person from the inside out.
It has been a privilege to pursue knowledge for its own sake and to see how it might help mankind in more practical ways.
I was never very good at exams, having a poor memory and finding the examination process rather artificial, and there never seemed to be enough time to follow up things that really interested me.
I think it was this curiosity about the natural world which awoke my early interest in science.
Like many students, I found the drudgery of real experiments and the slowness of progress a complete shock, and at my low points I contemplated other alternative careers including study of the philosophy or sociology of science.
My parents were born in Norfolk and spent their early years working in the big houses of that rural English county, my mother as a cook and my father as a handyman and chauffeur.
After an extensive interview he arranged for my weaknesses in foreign languages to be over-looked and so I started a Biology degree at Birmingham in 1967.
It is commonly the case with technologies that you can get the best insight about how they work by watching them fail.
When you're a monster, you are thanked and praised for not being a monster.
I want to do whatever people allow me to do with great people and have a great time doing it.
Artist colonies are notorious for breaking up marriages and housing affairs.