“I never really did anything academically.” — David Essex Quote

I never really did anything academically.

I was never one of those people who was desperate to be famous.

I first started going to Kent from the East End, where I was brought up, when I was a very small boy, going with my family to pick hops on working holidays. That was the first time I'd ever seen the countryside. Kent has a special place in my heart.

I've always been embarrassed by that side of my reputation, my focus has always been the music or piece of theatre or film that I'd doing. It's never been the good look department.

As a kid, my family used to go to a holiday camp in either Clacton-on-Sea or the Isle of Sheppey, on the other side of the Thames Estuary. We'd stay in a caravan or a chalet, and it was very family-orientated.

I started assisting music composers at 15 in an attempt to run away from studies. But my mom, hailing from a traditional, academically inclined south Indian family influence, made me complete my degree.

I don't think anyone will deny that girls are academically superior as a group.

I'm worried about the future of America insofar as our academically most promising students are being funneled through the cookie-cutter Ivy League and other elite schools and emerging with this callow anti-American, anti-military cast to their thinking.

Some people are academically inclined, some vocationally and we shouldn't penalise the latter.