Finding a cure for cystic fibrosis – it would change the life of my niece.

My chief consolation in this year of living dyingly has been the presence of friends. I can’t eat or drink for pleasure anymore, so when they offer to come it’s only for the blessed chance to talk. Some of these comrades can easily fill a hall with paying customers avid to hear them: they are talkers with whom it’s a privilege just to keep up. Now at least I can do the listening for free. Can they come and see me? Yes, but only in a way. So now every day I go to a waiting room, and watch the awful news from Japan on cable TV (often closed-captioned, just to torture myself) and wait impatiently for a high dose of protons to be fired into my body at two-thirds the speed of light. What do I hope for? If not a cure, then a remission. And what do I want back? In the most beautiful apposition of two of the simplest words in our language: the freedom of speech.

A single-malt whisky.

A Labour government.

I was what I call a “nut lifter” in a factory in Enfield. I had to get nuts and bolts from the production line into big tins.

When I came round after being seriously ill. I’d had a dose of morphine, the sun was shining and I thought, “Ah yes, I live!”

When my dad died this year.

A professional footballer.