A lot of awful gigs. You can’t become a successful comedian without dying on your arse more times than you can remember.

I left the army and got a job with Unilever in Northern Ireland. They were very strict and you had to have a hat, and when you went into a shop you had to raise your hat to the shopkeeper and then sell your wares. I was selling margarine.

The back end of a horse in panto in Newcastle in 1979.

I worked in a TGI Fridays when I was 19 and came to London for the first time. It was absolutely horrible and I got fired after two weeks.

To my parents for all the mess-ups. There have been times when I’ve been going through something and I’ve thought, God, I’m so glad my mum and dad are dead, because they don’t have to go through it with me.

Love makes me feel sick. I get sick with worry about my kids. It keeps me up at night.

Cowardice. There are so many issues that I would like to express opinions about but I’m too scared to stick my head above the parapet because of the social media pile-on.

I was born in 1964, in the most working-class area of Liverpool, so the N-word was bandied around a lot.

A Rolls-Royce. I met my wife, Jackie, when I was filming a Lynda La Plante drama called The Governor. I fell in love with her instantly and I was bullshitting that I had a Rolls-Royce. When I finished filming, she decided to leave her country and come and live with me in London. On the way to the airport, I phoned my PA and said, “Go and buy a Rolls-Royce.”

Losing my marbles.