In 1989, in Cuba, about to board a plane for Milan, where I was going to school for a year. The visa didn’t arrive in time, so I couldn’t board. The plane crashed and people died.

And actually now having had the advantage of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and being able to look at some of the records of what the apartheid government was doing, the thing that is surprising to me is why so many of us survived. I mean, how is it that they did not assassinate more of us?

A car crash in the Utah mountains in 2005. We were driving from Arizona to Salt Lake City to go to a basketball game and the car slipped on black ice and we skidded off the motorway, flipped over and rolled down a ravine. The police officer said it was the worst accident he’d seen in 18 years when nobody died.

My sister saved me from drowning. I shouted at her because she pulled me out of the pool and hurt my arm.

I worked in the largest pork pie factory in Europe. I had a plastic mushroom-shaped thing and had to tamp down the meat into the pie base. It was a conveyor belt of pies from nine to five. The worst thing was the crackly AM radio, which was played loudly through the tinny tannoy system. I still can’t listen to I’m Not In Love by 10cc without thinking of raw minced pork.

Not doing Top Of The Pops when The Young Ones’ single went to number one.

My granddaughter is only one, but she gives the best hugs. That’s when I’m happiest at the moment.

Jazz, Delicious Hot, Disgusting Cold by the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. Whenever Rik and I got stuck writing a script, we would put this on and the world would immediately seem to be a more stupidly brilliant place again.

I practise stoicism. Not the stiff-upper-lip, modern stuff, but the ancient Greek philosophy. You have to accept what you can’t change. I try to face forwards all the time. When that doesn’t work, I think about buying a machine gun.

I only ever wanted to be an actor or a rock star. I was suspended from school in the sixth form and allowed back only when I promised to join the army. But I lied.