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.

Falling flat on my face in Billy Elliot on Boxing Day when I was 14. I fell smack bang at the end of my number. I was mortified.

I recently had a dramatic fall on stage in Hungary. It was a massive stage – I was miles away from the audience – and I didn’t expect there to be two monitors in the middle of it. I went completely arse over tit and landed on my chin. First, I felt shock, pain, embarrassment, and then I felt lucky that I didn’t break any teeth or bite through my tongue. I asked for an ice pack for my chin, got up and finished the set.

At the TV Baftas last year I was wearing these heels that had stiff bows on the front. One heel locked into the other bow and I went arse over tit.

I spent my life searching for family. I travelled around the world to look each one of them in the eye. Unfortunately, but understandably, for most of them, I am their biggest disappointment.

When I was a child, a member of staff at Wood End Assessment Centre [a former children’s home in Wigan] bellowed: “He copies them poems off of Bob Marley records.”

I made a suicide attempt at 12 or 13 years old.

That I can’t write.

Believing in, even admiring, people who refuse to believe in me, and not believing people who do.

In a photo album of just one family.