Quotes by Paul Hollywood

I dont feel 50. Im still ambitious, and Ive only just got my licence to race sports cars. I race for an Aston Martin team called Beechdean, and its a huge challenge.

Before I was ever a baker, I was a teacher. Or, at least, that is what I thought I was going to be. After O-levels, I went to art school in Wallasey on the Wirral, and my mate Cavan and I did a teacher training course.

To make a full-blooded puff pastry, you need time, you need patience, and you need precision. Its all about the lamination: its all about building up the layers of butter, dough, butter, dough; as the butter melts, it creates steam, and that brings up the layers of the two doughs apart from each other, and thats what gives it the rise.

Ironically, when I was in Dubai with the BBC Good Food Show, even though its an urban area, when you see the vast panorama from the top of the Burj Khalifa, it feels remote, as if its just sprung up out of the desert. I like Dubai. I didnt think I would, but the food and the people were great.

I can be a romantic. The way to every womans heart is through her stomach. Food is at the core of everything.

I love France. Its got the sun down at the bottom, the Alps for skiing, and all that wine and food.

Ive never been on a diet and never will.

I dont believe in diets. They dont necessarily work. What they do is scrub your weight down, but as soon as you finish, you naturally go back up. I keep everything in my diet - gluten and sugar - I just cut it down a little bit and train more. Its not rocket science.

I will never, ever go on a carb-free diet.

We didnt travel much when I was little - most of what we did was visit various campsites around Conway, north Wales. My first major holiday abroad was to Ibiza with my parents when I was five. I vividly remember the plane touching down and that the hotel had great swings with lots of little lizards darting about that I was determined to catch.

I drove from Naples to the Amalfi coast in an Alpha Romeo 1969 Spider, which was lovely. There have been lots of movies made down there, and I felt a bit like James Bond - the driving is quite hairy. The locals have mopeds, but you wouldnt catch me on a bike on those roads. A tank would be safer!

My own preferred fitness regime is to use my bicycle.

Dad was a baker, and we lived above the bakery, so I was always popping down to have an apple pie or a doughnut or a custard or gypsy tart: I had a very sweet tooth, and I think that that was what got me into doing what I do now.