The number one rule I give them is just not give them the golden rule. Do unto others, I'm not a religious guy, but, I mean, nobody said it any better in a couple thousand years than that, which may be why it's lasted to a certain degree too. I mean, more people are reading a 2000-year-old book about how to behave than anything that anybody's coming up with lately. Now it's got a lot of, particularly the Old Testament, it's got different kinds of stories, to some extent, but if the whole world lived by the golden rule, it would be such a more wonderful society.

You’re going to come up against brick walls in life. You’ve got to go over them, under them, around them, or crash through them, but somehow or other you’ve got to get to the other side.

One’s created sense of self is not who you are. The present moment is all we have.

To tell the truth.

A picnic on the beach at Seaforth during the war. Somehow I managed to wriggle through a barbed-wire fence and run across a minefield. My teenage aunt Kat bravely followed suit and rescued me.

Losing track (see above).

I had dreams of becoming the first scouse pope. Unfortunately, the girls got to me first.

A lady came up to me in Tesco last year and said, “Excuse me, but didn’t you used to be Roger McGough?”

I’m irritated by critics and academics who dismiss poetry that is popular, comprehensible or humorous.

I’m embarrassed when I get people’s names wrong.