Sydney has the world's best swimming pool. Walk through the Botanical Gardens and you come to the Andrew 'Boy' Charlton Pool on Mrs Macquaries Road, with incredible views of Finger Wharf and the Harbour.

I never use organic vegetables. Why would you want to? The idea of taking a courgette grown in a third-world country in an organic field, packed into a polystyrene box, flown across the oceans, washed in chlorinated water, packed into a foam box, driven halfway across the country, wrapped in plastic and stamped 'organic,' what's the point?

Street stalls, be they in Korea, Thailand or anywhere else in Asia, in a covered market or simply on a street corner with a few brightly coloured plastic stools and tables, are my favourite places in the world to eat.

The culinary world is a fascinating place that has been influenced over the centuries by culture, religion, fashion, war, art, science and, more recently, globalisation.

Raft Point is among the greatest examples of ancient indigenous art we know of.

I have no qualms with people who want to be vegetarians; it's just foolish. They are missing out on the best things in life: meat, cheese, proper Christmas pudding.

Those who know me well will tell you that I love a market, and when I say market, I mean food market. No matter where in the world, they allow me to soak up the culture, to hear the rhythmic chattering of the local people and traders, and take in the all-important smells, pungent and intoxicating.

I ate some really amazing food in Thailand. I had river turtle, and dried rat, which was quite chewy and interesting and a bit like biltong.

My father did lots of things. He had an orange-juice factory. He did real estate. He did commercial selling. He was always up and about doing all sorts of weird and wonderful things and being adventurous. I always admired his self-discipline. He was very good at getting everything done. He was very tidy.

My nanna was an extraordinary lady, and a good old-fashioned cook. She'd just be pottering around, cooking dinner for 25 people on a wood-fired stove without a problem.

What I'm trying to do as an Australian is to say to people, 'You've got to go back out to Australia,' because there are rural communities that really rely upon tourism to continue to go.

I love the island of Majorca. I love the beach at Cala Ratjada, which is on the far side of the island where not many Britons go.

Fish and chips by nature are greasy, so we put vinegar on it and we like it because it helps our digestive system. The vinegar breaks down the fat.

Pumpkin and nutmeg tarts are a small, sweet version of the classic tart, a combination that is a particular favourite of mine.

I got quite into Spam once, in Korea. On their Thanksgiving, they give boxes of it to their friends. I fry it in batter with herbs wrapped around.

Australia is an extraordinary country full of people who eat extraordinary food. There are Greeks, Italians, Vietnamese, Koreans, Chinese, Brits. It's so varied.

It seems that the more we travel, the more we want flavour and variation in our food - and the bolder it is, the more addictive those flavours will be.

My grandmother would let me stand on a stool stirring gravy in a large roasting dish in front of a wood-fired stove at the age of six. She wasn't worried about the whole health and safety stuff.

I like all my jackets to be on wooden coat hangers, all facing the same direction.

The most important ingredient of Sunday lunch is the conversation. Without that, it's dead and gone.

Sunday morning is time to slob around and perhaps go swimming.

I don't worry about the camera adding pounds, I am who I am.

I'm definitely not a nerd, not a nerd at all.

I think a robot butler would be a great idea for certain things. But the idea of anybody coming into my bedroom and doing stuff for me, besides my wife and I - such as giving you tea in the morning - I just find a bit irksome.

There is no way in the world that a vacuum cleaner will ever be obsolete - they use them for swimming pools, they use them for houses, they use them for industrial purposes. They're fantastic things.

People sometimes forget that Sydney is a harbour and it's the ferries that make it unique.

It's hard to get your head around the scale of Australia.

There are three types of palate. There's the palate that can't taste anything, there's the normal palate, and there's the Super Palate. I don't think I've got a Super Palate, but it's pretty good.

Restaurant kitchens are highly pressurised environments, with lots of young men, and that means one thing: testosterone. It's not brutal - it's military. It is regimented, tough. People are put into compartments and have to do exactly what they're told or the whole thing falls apart.

I like to reactivate my body after a long journey by getting the sun in my eyes.

If you go to a restaurant and you go with people you like, your food will always taste really good.

Cutting out meat or fish I could maybe just about manage - living without either? I can't see myself doing that ever, ever, ever.

Markets have long been at the centre of communities, not just somewhere to drop in and grab a bag of groceries, but a hub, a meeting place, and always a place to stop and eat.

You can't blame another person for your world being different - or things like divorce. It gets right on my goat when people don't take responsibility.

MasterChef's' about real people and for real people. It's aspirational and inspirational. There's nothing snobbish about it.

Let's be honest, we all love a roast, but Sunday lunch could be a huge plate of salade nicoise; it could be eggs benedict; it could be a barbecue. The important thing is you're making an effort, and you're all together.

My food hero would be someone like Elizabeth David, because I think what she did for Britain was amazing. Also David Thompson, an Australian chef who does Thai food and really understands the basis of it, has always been very inspiring.

I cooked, which was pretty un-Australian. And I didn't really like Australian music... I preferred the New Romantics and punk and stuff like that.

I'm an Australian - I grew up in Melbourne and Sydney - but as a kid you don't learn much about the Kimberley.

Few people think about the Top End of Australia as a travel destination.

That's one of the things that concerns me - vegan steak or whatever. It is a hard terminology thing, because what are you eating? With beef you know it's a piece of beef.

Cooking is a great leveller. You can be a sports star, an actor, an entrepreneur, anything, but cooking strips it all away.

My worst flight was with the Indonesian carrier Garuda from Australia to Bali, which was just awful.

I always gauge the deliciousness of the food in markets by the number of 'people eating and waiting - the more the better.

The most important aspect of a home is that it's a retreat, a place where you can laugh and cry.

My kind of cooking is not a single style - French, Asian, Australasian or British - it's not modern, old-fashioned or classic; it's a mix of all these things. And at its core is a boy who loved to cook with his Nanna.

Men and women are not the same in the kitchen. Women tend to be uninhibited and instinctive. Men are inconsistent, egotistical show-offs.

I love Moroccan food, but I don't want to eat a goat or sheep's head, thanks.

I grew up in a world with my father where you learnt to iron, you learnt to cook, you learnt how to clean the toilet... I want my children to be the same... I want them to be anywhere in the world and be able to cope.

Growing up in Australia, we didn't really go on holiday. We lived beside the beach, so when I walked out of the back gate I was on the sand.