Evan Davis

Being funny, it turns out, is like being a bank. It's a confidence trick. As long as everyone believes in you, you are fine.

We all know that Americans love their statistics - in sport, obviously. And in finance too.

It's amazing, if you know what you want to say, how fast it is to write.

It's not a bad idea to occasionally spend a little time thinking about things you take for granted. Plain everyday things.

Black Friday is not another bad hair day in Wall Street. It's the term used by American retailers to describe the day after the Thanksgiving Holiday, seen as the semi-official start of Christmas shopping season.

The new industries are brainy industries and so-called knowledge workers tend to like to be near other people who are the same. Think of the City of Hollywood. People cluster. This means you have winning regions, such as London and Cambridge, and losing regions. The people who want to be top lawyers in Sunderland are hoovered up by London.

I've always been scared of advertising folk. I've met them at parties and I've been to their offices and I've always found them intimidatingly cool. At one company I visited, they held their meetings in a caravan that had somehow been installed in the place, a rather more exotic place to gather than the typical BBC glass box.