I was about six years old in a market square in Italy and my dad said, “Oh, those shorts would look perfect on you.” So he whipped my trousers off and I hadn’t got any knickers on.

I was in Oliver! when I was 10 and I peed myself on stage in front of however many people the Palladium holds. It was the stuff of nightmares.

In the 1950s I went to the Chelsea Arts Club’s New Year’s Eve ball at the Royal Albert Hall dressed as a Christmas pudding, with swimming trunks under my costume and holly in my hair.

Eight or nine years ago, I disgraced myself in the Japanese ambassador’s home in Dublin, at a celebration for my late mother-in-law’s book about living in Japan. Afterwards, when I had to apologise, she told me it was the worst night of her life and, because I was drunk enough not to remember the details, it will never not be the most embarrassing night of my life. People are filling in details even now – “Remember when you fell under the table during the first course?”

I’ve been asleep at the wheel on the M11, had an engine fire over the Atlantic in a light aircraft, driven unprotected through an enemy firing zone to do a gig in wartime Sarajevo – the list goes on and on. But I did have stage 3 throat cancer and was cured by some fantastic UK medics.

Well, I’m not too happy about snakes. I also hate sand. It’s very inconvenient.

“What makes you think you are so special?”

Runway 27R at Heathrow.

Procrastination.

A Cessna Golden Eagle eight-seater aircraft. I flew it across the Atlantic both ways and did two US tours and two European tours in it. I finally sold it and got a job as an airline pilot in which I was paid to fly, rather than the other way round.