Never trust people; always trust paper. I'd marry a piece of paper if I could.

When I first heard Lady Gaga's 'Born This Way,' I looked out the window for the car alarm going off.

Youthful beauty is a poor indicator of long-term appeal in a man.

One of the happy consequences of my brain is that I rarely sleep.

My musical taste is somewhat dated - I mean, freeze frame, go back 60 years, and you're in my comfort zone.

You can separate the church and state all you like, but Christmas is inescapable, and it's marvellous, and it's not going away.

If a deal advertised on an unknown website looks too good to be true, it almost certainly is.

I really want to emphasise this - 'Strictly' is a positive show. It's interesting that it gets cast into this, understandably, the ordinary net of reality shows, but there's no part of it which feels nihilistic or unpleasant. It's all about learning something and doing well, and you feel this overwhelming sense of people wanting you to do well.

I don't want to be a total moron and be just known as the jazz-handed judge.

The law is the law whether you're dealing with a multi-million-pound fraud or a car deal where someone feels diddled because their exhaust falls off on the way home.

I hope I'm always appropriate on 'JR' if it's a serious case. But if you have a case of a man who has a wardrobe malfunction with a lime green mankini, even I on the odd occasion find it mildly amusing.

As efficiently as our phones connect us to one another, and as much as we take advantage of that, we must remember that they have the power to alienate us, too.

There's something fundamentally grubby about the rich paying people to seek out cracks in the system to hide their money.

If you are concerned you are the victim of illegal corporate surveillance, you should seek specialist - and independent - legal advice at once.

I used to deal with high-profile criminal cases that were covered extensively in the media, and one of the things I quickly appreciated was there was a gulf between what really took place in the middle of a case, the impact on victims, the effect on the police and how they solved crimes, and the way it was reported.

I was in the National Youth Theatre, too, but there was no dancing there. I was doing plays like 'Julius Caesar' and playing the lute very badly.

I celebrate Christmas with wilful glee.

No sane person enjoys paying tax... money, after all, is a very nice thing to have. But it's the price we all pay for so many vital things in this country - and those of us lucky enough to have a bit more should be proud to be paying a little bit more as well.

I am unashamed to say that I have a super-crush on Kate Oates, the series producer of 'Coronation Street.'

I realise I'm known for doing big, very serious cases, but fundamentally, any lawyer will tell you that even the most complex trials come down to the same questions. Are people telling porky pies? Are bank accounts dodgy? Is someone trying to get one over on you? It's my job to listen and then decide.

My sexuality, in terms of 'Strictly' or whatever else I do in my life, ought to be as irrelevant as the length of my big toe.

Discounting the ineffably repetitive homophobic barbs that I receive most days, Twitter trolls' most common gripe against me appears to be that I am 'posh.' Contrary to their unshakeable view, I was not born into the upstairs world.

I'm very much into Barry's Boot Camp... it's the real deal.

No matter how excluded you have become from Christmas, it is a genuinely inclusive matter; frankly, you are conscripted into it.