“You’ll never do well as an actor unless you change your name.” I’m not going to say who.

When I was growing up, my mother would accuse me of showing off. That’s the most shaming, humbling, horrible thing. What was I doing? Showing off!

It happened when I was younger, somewhere outside London. We were on bikes, and this older girl pulled up and said something racist that I won’t repeat. I will never forget that, because it was the first time, and I was like, “Oh, I am feeling different from everyone around me right now”.

A friend said, “If you remembered everything you did, you’d kill yourself.” He’s sort of crazy, but he’s probably right.

I loved my 1 minute 40 seconds singing at the coronation of King Charles. I was the most nervous I’ve been.

One horrible afternoon in Chicago when I forgot my words in The Marriage of Figaro, in a role I’d sung hundreds of times.

That moment in Bilbao in 2020, when I tried to cross the street and did a pirouette and suffered a dreadful break in my right leg, which means now I have 10 screws and a band in it.

I cleaned the toilets at the local pub every Saturday morning.

In 2006, I went fishing for red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico. On the way back, one of the engines caught fire and then we had one engine for 70 miles. Slowly but surely, we got to Baton Rouge in the darkness but then got very close to a very large passing ship – they didn’t see us and we didn’t see them.

Unfriendliness.