It was a unique childhood, to say the least. My father was born in Patiala to refugee parents and was a part of the Indian Air Force. The talented few amongst the Air Force pilots are made test pilots. Test pilots are best suited to look at the space programme as they are trained to expect the unexpected.
I'm part of a speech therapy course called the Maguire Programme. It isn't a cure; it's something you need to maintain and work on. I get days where I find things more difficult than others.
I rarely come away from presenting the 'Today' programme without some sense of regret. There is always some question that I should have asked, or some point that I should have made. This is annoying but not surprising. Perfection is hard to achieve in a three-hour live programme.
You get fed up watching shows with not much care and love, reality programmes where they put people in a house for a fortnight and film them doing everything, or where participants arrive after lunch and do the programme at six.
Dickens never joined a political party nor put forward a political programme. He was a writer who rightly saw his power as coming through his fiction.
In every area, we seem to have thrown everything away and embraced reality television. It's nauseating, programme after programme.
I think here in America the space programme was such an enticing thing to be going on, that the thought of a family being able to go into space and live up there was really kind of mind-bending at the time.
'Tree Fu Tom' is a truly interactive programme because it is designed to help children get up off the sofa and physically move, which is a very important part of children's development.
