On BBC Breakfast, I accidentally said “fuck” on air. My microphone had been turned on when I wasn’t in the room. It went out across the telly and they had to apologise.

I would have behaved better to my first wife, and the girl I lived with afterwards. I was always away.

My mum died in her early 70s, and for the last six or seven years of her life she couldn’t move, didn’t speak. By the time our children were born, she was too ill to communicate. I haven’t many regrets in life, but I do regret that they never got to know her, even though she was still alive for a few years. They couldn’t see her warmth, her spirit, her courage.

I wish I sent one more helicopter to get the hostages and we would have rescued then and I - I would have been re-elected, but that may have - and that may have interfered with the foundation of the Carter Center. And if I had to choose between four more years and the Carter Center, I think I would choose the Carter Center.

There wasn’t a lot of bullying at my school, but there was a fair amount of ragging – and I knew which side I wanted to be on. I’d say sorry to anyone who felt picked on.

In my teens, an accountant. In my 20s, either a rock star or a novelist.

Fondly and down the centuries. I think partly what drives writers to write is the yearning for immortality.