I rolled back the images. Looked again. There it was. A new tumor, large, filling my right middle lobe. It looked, oddly, like a full moon having almost cleared the horizon. Going back to the old images, I could make out the faintest trace of it, a ghostly harbinger now brought fully into the world. I was neither angry nor scared. It simply was. It was a fact about the world, like the distance from the sun to the Earth.

On a plane with Meryl Streep in 1984: the engines blew and we had to make an emergency landing.

I’ve had a surprising number of near-death experiences: I was nearly blown up by a landmine in Sudan; I was stranded on the Zambezi river at night; I was bucked off a rodeo horse in Arizona and had to be airlifted to hospital; and, worst of all, I once ate a Pot Noodle.

Climbing Scafell Pike in the Lake District when I was about 15. The winds were about 85mph, my legs lifted and I nearly flew off. Thankfully somebody grabbed me.

A lady came up to me in Tesco last year and said, “Excuse me, but didn’t you used to be Roger McGough?”

That it will go on quite happily without me.

I had dreams of becoming the first scouse pope. Unfortunately, the girls got to me first.

Losing track (see above).

Unimpeachable, nonpareil, self‑effacing.

I’m embarrassed when I get people’s names wrong.