There were two drama societies in Enniskillen when I was growing up, St. Michaels and the Enniskillen Amateur Dramatic Society, and I had the pleasure of working with them both.
I was attracted to black music for the same reason that I loved those old Irish ballads. Both were social statements of sorts, and both were indigenous to their respective cultures: Ireland, where my father had grown up, and towns like St. Louis along the Mississippi River, where I was growing up.
Kurt Vonnegut talks about how we know there is another family out there and when we find it we get this almost instinctive sense of belonging. And that is how I felt in Enniskillen in 1977 when I realized there were these people of all ages, whatever their religion, from different backgrounds, who were bound together by a love of plays and acting.
As a kid, growing up, my heroes all had the Intercontinental Championship. Ultimate Warrior, Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels, Mr. Perfect, Ric Rude, all of them. And they were the people I looked up to and wanted to be like.
One of the things that's wonderful about having a festival in a small town like Enniskillen is that we don't have lots of purpose-built venues so we have to be creative about where we place events.
You discover two things when you're a teenager. One, that your parents are not the idols that you thought they were when you were growing up, if you had nice parents. And two, that you have power over them, and you can upset them and confront them and attack them.
I try and speak out on things that affect where I live in London, and at home in Enniskillen. For instance, I am very keen we get our bypass - the town is completely clogged with traffic and it's one of the most beautiful inland towns in Ireland.
I had two cats growing up that were indoor/outdoor and both of them died from being hit by a car. One of them, she didn't have an ID tag on, so someone just thought it was a stray cat I highly recommend to keep your cats indoors. Their lives end up a lot longer.
While growing up, my dream and my goal was to win an Olympic gold medal. I did that, and both times, they were the proudest moments in my amateur career.
I applied to drama school when I was about 18 and didn't have any luck anywhere. They basically turned me away and said I had a bit of growing up to do. I went back to Aberystwyth and did my growing up by spending eight months working in Peacocks.
I think it's in my blood: both of my parents are very hard workers and were always working when I was growing up. I love working and what I do.
Going into work and seeing Shawn Michaels - someone I watched growing up - how many people can say that? That they get to see people like Shawn Michaels at work and that they get to learn off Shawn Michaels. To me that's insane.
I think what shaped me was I had two parents who were scientists, and especially, they were great readers. They had both grown up in sort of rural parts of the South and were oddballs where they grew up. They were budding intellectuals.
Michael and I both know that had we tried to have a child and get married in the previous time we were together, it probably would not have ended pretty. We both had a lot of growing up to do.
Both my parents were working in politics when I was growing up, so going on stage was not that great a leap.
I was a big fan of Bret Hart growing up, and Shawn Michaels, the Undertaker, Triple H. I've probably drawn from them when I was younger.
I had thought that growing up's consolation was that you could escape from the arbitrariness of things, that somehow one acquired more control. Now you had two numbers until you were ninety-nine. And it wasn't true. Growing up was just more of the same but taller. What happened was all luck. There was no logic.