Yes, I travel in unusual circles. George Osborne and his wife Frances are my cousins.

Every Thanksgiving, we visited our New York cousins and went shopping at Bergdorf's and Saks for long dresses to wear to the Homestead for New Year's Eve.

The biggest piece is my family... From watching films like The Godfather on our dining room wall, to having a great relationship with my sibling. Or going on weekend trips with our cousins to the beach and eating all day... it's been a crazy childhood; a 'bohemian one'.

Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself.

You know, all my songs are relatives, brothers, sisters, cousins.

I was glad to hear of that determination as I detest the practice of cousins marrying or any marriage between persons in which there can be traced the most distant relationship. I go for the improvement instead of the deterioration of our race.

My father and mother were second cousins, though they did not meet till shortly before their marriage.

I'm a big fan of gallows humor. When my aunt passed away, she was in a coma for a day before my cousins pulled the plug. And the amount of joking and base humor that went on that day around her bed was so insane. It's crazy how people talk when something horrible is happening.

I did grow up in Kenosha, Wisconsin, around a lot of my mom's family. I had a lot of cousins and aunts and uncles around me, and my sisters and my brother. Probably the most formative part of it was that we grew up on the edge of a forest. It wasn't a big forest, but it was enough. When you're a kid, it feels gigantic.

The family that brunches together stays together. My cousins and I swear by this rule, and Sunday brunch with them is like a detox session.

We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form.

In our family, and not just us but even with my cousins, uncles and aunts, we celebrate every festival - be it Christmas, Easter, Eid, Diwali or our birthdays.

A strangely reflective, even melancholy day. Is that because, unlike our cousins in the northern hemisphere, Easter is not associated with the energy and vitality of spring but with the more subdued spirit of autumn?

When I was growing up, all my cousins had high-top fades. I thought it would be cool to see how long I could grow a high-top.

One Christmas, I wrote a nativity play. But nobody turned up on the day of the performance apart from my brother and my cousins, so I just read the whole script onstage and made my brother pretend to be one of the animals at the inn.

When I was young, we always went to our posh cousins at Christmas. My dad made sure we had new shoes and clean clothes - he was really proud - and that's why I felt different from everyone living around me. We had the first television on the estate, the first fridge.

Growing up in Northern California, I've only seen snow at Christmas maybe twice in my life! I was always jealous of my cousins on the East Coast with their white Christmases.

I feel bad for my little cousins who don't see themselves being represented, or the little girls in my community who won't have a chance to see a Disney princess... who resembles them.

People have been saying life will change for us now but me? No chance. I may be a World Cup winner but I will always be the lad who played cricket with his friends and cousins in the park on Stoney Lane in south Birmingham using an old milk crate for stumps.

The thrill of performing - that's something that hasn't changed for me. That simultaneous joy of creating something and sharing it with an audience - it's the same now as it was then, when it was just my cousins' birthday party.

For I know that we laughers have a gross cousinship with the most high, and it is this contrast and perpetual quarrel which feeds a spring of merriment in the soul of a sane man.

We all ought to understand we're on our own. Believing in Santa Claus doesn't do kids any harm for a few years but it isn't smart for them to continue waiting all their lives for him to come down the chimney with something wonderful. Santa Claus and God are cousins.

A strangely reflective even melancholy day. Is that because unlike our cousins in the northern hemisphere Easter is not associated with the energy and vitality of spring but with the more subdued spirit of autumn?

Yes I travel in unusual circles. George Osborne and his wife Frances are my cousins.