My most important professional accomplishment to date is the ability to keep working with absolutely no skills whatsoever.

The American audiences are more vocal and enthusiastic. British audiences tend to sit back a little more.

I think the challenge is going out in front of a paying audience with absolutely nothing and trying to entertain them for two hours. Thankfully, I only think about that right before we go on, and then once we're out there, everything's fine.

As a kid I watched television 24 hours a day and loved every minute of it. The two shows that always make me laugh and are therefore my favourites are The Dick Van Dyke Show and Fawlty Towers.

When I became finance minister, they called me Okonjo-Wahala - or 'Trouble Woman.' It means 'I give you hell.' But I don't care what names they call me. I'm a fighter; I'm very focused on what I'm doing, and relentless in what I want to achieve, almost to a fault. If you get in my way, you get kicked.

New York has arguably become the quintessential 1 percent city, a city that has been so given over to the rich that you now have to be rich to live here. Or not live here: New York's also a preferred destination for foreign money spent on vast, lifeless apartments in the sky that are occupied a couple of weeks a year at most.

Divorce is one of the most financially traumatic things you can go through. Money spent on getting mad or getting even is money wasted.

Instead of more talk about salmon and high-speed rails, more criticism of the Supreme Court or more praise for the Soviet's Sputnik mission - President Obama should use his State of the Union Address to tell the American people the truth about the fundamental financial challenges our country faces.