Standing on stage in between Robert Young and Andrew Innes, blasting away.

When we had children at home. But recently I finished a book about old secrets that I’ve been working on for a long time, and when I was done, I felt a gigantic, joyful relief in having escaped from the corn maze of remembered facts in which I’d been wandering for so long.

I have become progressively happier as I’ve got older. It’s to do with not striving as much.

Toasting marshmallows on an open fire in Yosemite national park.

I was thrown out of a club by bouncers when I walked into somebody and told them that I was registered blind. They said: “Don’t give a fuck – you don’t belong in here.” As a straight white man, it gives you a taste of what other people have to contend with.

When I was losing my sight, I couldn’t see where I was going, and I went into an undertaker’s thinking it was a barber’s. I asked the undertaker whether he had many waiting.

To Kill a Mockingbird – I was meant to read it for an exam and I didn’t and I cheated. I was allowed to use a laptop to type my answers because I couldn’t see my writing, so I hid an electronic copy of the book on the laptop.

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

Strictly. I went into it thinking I would last two weeks!

Hard-working, resilient, irritating.