Did I have a mis-spent youth? I suppose I did in that I left school early without any qualifications, having bunked off a few times for tournaments.

The memories for the missed opportunities are stronger than for the ones I managed to get over the line in.

In all the years I've been playing, I've never considered changing my cue. It was the first cue I ever bought, aged 13, picked from a cabinet in a Dunfermline snooker centre just because I liked the Rex Williams signature on it. I saved £40 to buy it. It's a cheap bit of wood, and it's been the butt of other players' jokes for ages."

I could have had eight or nine world titles at least, and you do think about that at times.

My parents always knew that I loved music. They just didn't think I'd try to make it a career. They thought I'd be a painter or an art teacher or something like that.

I'm a boring guy who's got a great job in a profession that still gives me a great deal of pleasure after 35 years.

When I was a CEO, I thought I understood private equity. I didn't. And what I've learned since my retirement, and since becoming directly involved in the world of private equity, points the way to a new career path for thousands of talented senior executives - and a new engine for value creation.

And fifth, we will champion small businesses, America's engine of job growth. That means reducing taxes on business, not raising them. It means simplifying and modernizing the regulations that hurt small business the most. And it means that we must rein in the skyrocketing cost of healthcare by repealing and replacing Obamacare.