When I was 17, I worked in a warehouse in Rotherham doing an audit of truck parts. I counted nuts and bolts all day long.

Working in farming in Somerset at 18, there were elements that were awful, and they were all really edifying. I mean, feeding chickens in sleet was hard work but I am so glad I did it.

Cleaning men’s toilets in the Swan hotel in the Cotswolds.

I worked on a trawler and I was seasick the whole time.

Not doing Top Of The Pops when The Young Ones’ single went to number one.

My granddaughter is only one, but she gives the best hugs. That’s when I’m happiest at the moment.

I hit a bit of lumpy tarmac driving my motorbike over the Pyrenees in the early 1980s. There was no safety barrier and I found myself riding along the edge of a precipice on half the width of the tyres for 100 yards.

I only ever wanted to be an actor or a rock star. I was suspended from school in the sixth form and allowed back only when I promised to join the army. But I lied.

Jazz, Delicious Hot, Disgusting Cold by the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. Whenever Rik and I got stuck writing a script, we would put this on and the world would immediately seem to be a more stupidly brilliant place again.

I practise stoicism. Not the stiff-upper-lip, modern stuff, but the ancient Greek philosophy. You have to accept what you can’t change. I try to face forwards all the time. When that doesn’t work, I think about buying a machine gun.