I read too much science fiction to mess with anything. I’d be terrified that, by changing something, my kids wouldn’t be mine.

There was a very large part of my 20s where I was an alcoholic, and an addict. When I lost my dad to cirrhosis, I knew that the only difference between us was that, tragically, he couldn’t stop whereas I could.

The floral waistcoat and shocking-pink shirt combo I wore on my 21st.

I spent too many years being hard on myself, like a drill sergeant in my head. I thought that if I was hard on myself, I’d get more results, but I now know that’s not true.

I’d like to say sorry to my mother. I had to choose between my parents, and I chose my father because he didn’t have any other kids. (My mother was a war widow and had two children from her first marriage.) I thought, in a childish way, that one had to be fair. It was very difficult for my mother and me, and we never really got over it.

Recently, when I got out of hospital and into my own bed with my wife and 10-year-old son; we watched some crap television and life had never seemed better.

Comfort, warmth and security.

Reading the news. It’s a dull job.

The problem with my job is that you meet people you admire and then you don’t admire them so much. The only one I carried on admiring was Nelson Mandela.