I think everyone at school experiences some form of bullying. With kids at school, it can be anything - it can be your shoes or the wrong bag or anything. If you are big like I am, you are always going to be a target. So I decided at school to make myself an even bigger target, if you like: to make myself as big as I could be.

If you're big at school, you've really got two choices. You're going to be a target. If you go to school, and you're me, you go, 'Right - I'm just going to make myself a bigger target. My confidence, it will terrify them.' That's how I felt in school.

There is really no one who hasn't made mistakes in their career. I'm always shocked that people would be so surprised that I might make mistakes. Martin Scorsese has made mistakes - why can't I?

When the 'Guardian' is commissioning writers to write obituary pieces about you and your career... it doesn't get much nastier than that. And you've just got to go, 'It doesn't actually matter.'

I trusted in God to return to football. I have worked very hard every day to achieve it, and thank God, my work paid off, being able to come back normally, scoring goals.

Part of me wanted to disappear into a cave in India, and I did end up going on retreats there, but, don't ask me why, I always felt very strongly that the point for me was to find a way to live a truly spiritual life in the modern day world and be able to work with all the positive aspects of our cultural and technological advancements.

I have different methods. Sometimes I just like to immerse myself in music; that's a really good way to switch off from the world. I also like to listen to Eckhart Tolle, a very wise, very spiritual man, who teaches us how to live in the present.

We are all responsible to Jesus first, and then, under him, to various other persons and offices. Discerning the path of love and obedience when two or more of these submissive relationships collide is a call to humble, Bible-saturated, spiritual wisdom.