Who are your heroes?
I think all the people I admire, are themselves, people who admire others. I have very little time for people who don't have heroes. I once heard someone-quite well known, I won't tell you who it is- say "no I don't have any heroes,". I said, that's naff, having heroes. I'm unafraid of worship of others, I mean not unconditional worship; very often, they're faults. My heroes are quite obvious, they're very common to people of my age and culture and generation. People like, Winston Churchill, and Oscar Wilde, if you like, they're hard to avoid. The more surprising ones, I suppose would be, I've always admired enormously, and I met her once and it sent me into a slight shiver; Martina Navratilova. I'm not quite sure why, it's certainly not sexual, I can assure you. It's not because I'm an avid tennis fan, it's something to do with her mixture of competitiveness... I'll tell you what it is, I'll tell you that my heroes are human beings who are a hundred percent themselves all the time. My heroes don't have that self conscious look about them where you think they know someone's watching them, and they're, in that sense more like an animal. A tree frog spends all its time being a tree frog, it doesn't wake up in the morning saying "am I a good tree frog, or a bad tree frog? Do I do well? Gosh, I wish I were a walrus." They just get on with being a tree frog. And Martina Navratilova is a supreme example of just someone who is herself at all times. She brings herself to the party.
