I'm never happy to settle.

I've not received any major sponsorship deals or anything else.

I was always the slightly fat kid, which used to bother me quite a bit.

As a jumper, I try to defy gravity as long as I can. But no matter how far I jump, I'll always hit the earth eventually.

I always start the day with a protein shake: protein powder mixed with water, peanut butter, and yoghurt to thicken it up.

My dad is a builder, and my mum's a nurse. They're just very normal people.

It was when my American coach Dan Pfaff came over from the States in 2009 and started working with me that we really began to look at my diet. He decided I was eating too many carbohydrates, so I cut back on bread. Over the next year I lost weight and became leaner.

My grandfather died before I was born, so I never had the chance to speak with him about his father. But I learned about him from books.

You still have to enjoy the tour games. If you go out there and just go through the motions, you can easily get into bad habits, you lose a bit of rhythm or a bit of form and then things can go pretty bad pretty quickly.

When I was playing that was the main focus - you knew what you had to achieve but you want to have fun doing it, otherwise there's no point in doing it.

There's always a little bit of anticipation - some people call it nerves - the night before, and although I always slept pretty well before big matches, you want to be on edge a little bit to get the best out of yourself.

I had always had the same pre-match routine that I went through every day - get up, go down for a swim and a stretch, back to the room for a shower, then down for brekkie - the same routine every game, and it got me ready.

You know there is something a little bit special about an Ashes.

Standing at the end of your run with the ball in your hand preparing to bowl the first ball of an Ashes series is an amazing feeling.

Umpiring is a tough job. Don't get me wrong - I wouldn't want to be an umpire. You've got a split second to make a decision.

The best thing about Lord's isn't the slope, it's just being there.

I loved playing at Lord's - I ended up with 26 wickets at 11.50 from three Tests there. Maybe the wicket, because of the slope, was perfect for my style of bowling.

Sometimes when things are happening outside the team, when forces are at work to try to break the team apart or cause issues, it can actually have a different effect - it can bring the boys closer together. They become more of a unit and they start to protect each other.

You're always going to get different personalities within a team.

One of the great things about cricket, and certainly something that I found helpful, was that as soon as you step over the boundary rope you can switch off everything that is happening off the field and focus solely on what is happening out on the pitch.

If the batsmen can give the bowlers a day and half of rest then that is going to work in the team's favour.

An Australian prime minister once said that his job was the second most important job in the country - behind being captain of the cricket team. It's not a job you take on lightly.

That was how we categorised ourselves in the dressing room - you were either a nerd or a Julio. Julios have got to look perfect - the hair has got to be perfect, they've got to have the right gear on, it's all about their appearance. The nerds weren't bothered about how they looked.

When I played in the Australia team the captains were all nerds. Allan Border was a nerd, Mark Taylor was a nerd, Steve Waugh was definitely a nerd and Ricky Ponting too.