The music journalist Paul Morley described me as bland.

I was born in 1964, in the most working-class area of Liverpool, so the N-word was bandied around a lot.

Called me the N-word.

I can’t disclose that because it’s not suitable for public airing, but it was truly awful; they’ve since said worse.

Losing my makeup bag.

Thinking that I’m right when I’m wrong. But not only that – being able to convince other people I’m right and then finding out I’m wrong.

I remember going to my auntie Pauline’s house in winter when I was eight or nine and she made me a roast beef sandwich. I ate it and fell asleep next to a fire. I felt like a cat, fed and left to nap.

I worked in a paper factory at five o’clock on a Saturday morning when I was in my early 20s. I’d go out raving the night before, get an hour’s sleep and then go to the factory. I was covered in paper cuts and used to think I heard people talking to me; they gave me a lot of breaks because they thought I was going mad.

That money doesn’t buy happiness.

I worked with Stephen Fry recently and we had a real heart-to-heart. I asked: “What was it like being in prison for being gay?” And thank God someone came in and he didn’t hear me say it. I was mixing him up with when he played Oscar Wilde. I could picture him in his cell.