Quotes from Paul Hollywood

I don't feel 50. I'm still ambitious, and I've only just got my licence to race sports cars. I race for an Aston Martin team called Beechdean, and it's a huge challenge.

I love evangelising about baking and passing the word on, and I will carry on doing that.

Since I was a kid, baking has been part of my life.

I do love my full English breakfast, but not every day. What I can't do without first thing in the morning, though, is my Danish pastry or a croissant - anything with a laminated dough, enriched with butter to make it beautifully golden and flaky.

We didn't 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.

'The Great British Bake Off' has brought baking to the nation, and we've seen people from all walks of life and backgrounds experience the highs and lows of competition and, more importantly, helping each other.

The key thing is to educate not just kids but adults about what goes into food. You do that in any way you can, bread machine or not.

I don't believe in diets. They don't 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. It's not rocket science.

I can't go to sleep on a train anymore because people take photos of me. You know, dribbling. It's a bit embarrassing. I go to sleep with my collar up.

Anything that has more buttercream than it does cake is going to be a no-no for me.

Making cake is one of the easiest things in the world.

I was filming in Roscrea in Co Tipperary. I had great fun watching monks in the monastery there making bread. They even offered me a job as their main baker. One of them said I would make a good monk, but I told him there was a slight problem because I was married.

I went to Naples to work with one of the best pizza-makers in the world, and guess how long he bakes his pizzas for? He bakes them for 45 seconds. In and out. And they're incredible. Any more than that, and it's no longer considered a pizza. I've been spouting off to people for years - six minutes in an oven.

Like most of Italy, Neapolitans like their food, and there are restaurants everywhere. But to make like a true Neapolitan, grab a pizza from a street vendor and eat it there and then. We tried a pizza that's folded over four times to make it nice and portable, then you eat it straight out of paper, like fish and chips.

I think baking's far easier than cooking, and because of that, it's more approachable.

I lived in Cyprus for six years where I learnt all about flatbreads.

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 wouldn't catch me on a bike on those roads. A tank would be safer!

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

A sponge is quite simple. You weigh ingredients, mix, and put it in the oven. With pastry, you manhandle it, shape it, fold it. You have to be involved with it; there is more jeopardy, more risk. But it's like making a casserole. There's a flurry of activity to begin with; then it's about leaving it to rest.

Get digital scales because, for baking, balance scales just aren't accurate enough: it's all in the weighing up.

I've never been on a diet and never will.

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

The sugar tax is fine. I agree with that. But I think it probably doesn't go too far. But then, I work on 'The Great British Bake Off.' We make cakes with sugar and butter. I can't be too critical. It is like anything in life: it is all about moderation.

Civilisation was built around wheat, around people settling down and not being nomadic. Baking is one of the oldest professions.