My grandfather took part in the Tulip Rally in an old Austin Sheerline and even competed in the Monte Carlo Rally. My father was the Scottish karting champion.

The bubble, as investing phenomenon, has been well studied ever since the 17th-century tulip bulb frenzy. Its counterpart in bear markets is not well understood.

Bulls don't read. Bears read financial history. As markets fall to bits, the bears dust off the Dutch tulip mania of 1637, the Banque Royale of 1719-20, the railway speculation of the 1840s, the great crash of 1929.

Flowers heal me. Tulips make me happy. I keep myself surrounded by them as soon as they start coming to the island from Canada, and after that when they come from the fields in La Connor, not far from where I live.

Bob Dole. He's like the neighbors' Labrador retriever your dad used to curse for all that barking, all that darn digging in your mom's tulip bed, and now look, you live next door to a godforsaken pack of teeth-baring rabid Pomeranians, and, good golly, Bob Dole!

I don't know why I chose to make my debut with 'Dil Maange More.' The film had three leading ladies - Tulip Joshi, Ayesha Takia and me - opposite Shahid Kapoor. I was fresh to Bollywood at that time because I had just come back from England and had no clue about hero-heroine dynamics in India.

I'm going to do an adaptation of the Italian film, Bread and Tulips. I really like that film.

How can you be content to be in the world like tulips in a garden, to make a fine show, and be good for nothing.

Daffodils, blossom and tulips jostle to the front of the stage in April. I love these early perennials: they may be more modest but they nearly all have that one special quality that a plant needs to transform your affections from admiration to affection - charm.

When tulip mania dies down, all that remains are pretty flowers. When bubbles burst, nothing is left but soapy residue. But the Internet revolution, for all its speculative excesses, really is changing the world.