Speech and having a stammer is obviously a big part of my life.

Men think they already know me. But as they get closer and closer, they become that 14-year-old again. A lot of men do stammer and blush a little bit.

I knew all about Edward VIII's abdication, George VI becoming the king and having a stammer, but nothing about how he got rid of it.

The stammer was a way of telling the world that he was not like others, a way of expressing his singularity.

What has influenced my life more than any other single thing has been my stammer. Had I not stammered I would probably... have gone to Cambridge as my brothers did, perhaps have become a don and every now and then published a dreary book about French literature.

Breathing is fundamental to speech. A stammer is caused by erratic airflow, so if you have a smooth airflow, you have smooth speech.

No one knows for sure if you can inherit a stammer, and so I worry that my baby might. It's why I want to work on my speech before he arrives. I don't want him to hear me stammer.

I've been told to speed up my delivery when I perform. But if I lose the stammer, I'm just another slightly amusing accountant.

I'm convinced there's a small room in the attic of the Foreign Office where future diplomats are taught to stammer.

I've stammered all my life, and it's fair to say that my stammer has shaped my life. It's made me make some decisions that I'm sure I wouldn't have if I didn't suffer with this affliction.

Before all this happened, I always used to see my stammer as being a negative, all my life, but then when I went on 'Pop Idol,' and the first time I saw it on television, it was really, really bad, but also it made me stand out; it made people remember me. So for the first time in my life, it worked to my advantage.

I still have a stammer that I can control by not opening a sentence with a hard consonant, or by concentrating for a moment, breathing softly down. Growing up, the 'Our Father' was lovely, made for me, the 'Hail Mary' was gorgeous, and 'Glory Be to the Father' was an absolute nightmare.

I think three or four years ago, people would have said my biggest weakness was that sometimes I was awkward on television, with my stammer, but I think they'd say that much less now.

I had this terrible stammer, so I couldn't really speak properly until I was 16 or 17.

I had a stammer through adolescence. Any fun I'd had performing in school plays disappeared and only came back at 18, when the stammer started to go. Then I thought: 'Well, perhaps I can show off now.'