On a flight to Newcastle, when we had terrible storms. The plane dropped quickly and the oxygen masks fell down. We had to land in Manchester.

I don’t know. I prefer it that way.

When I had a bicycle accident when I was 24. I was on a bridge going down; the bicycle broke and I smashed to the ground, face first. I broke my jaw and my teeth, and had to have plastic surgery. It all took half a year and then, funnily enough, I got my first big job – a TV series – with what I thought of then as this big, ugly scar.

I think I had a close shave with the taxi driver John Worboys. I was in Soho and going back to Chiswick where I lived, and I got a black cab. This guy wouldn’t stop talking and he offered me champagne, and I said: “I don’t like champagne.” It went a bit quiet and I thought I’d offended him. Then I remember going: “Hang on a minute, you shouldn’t be drinking champagne if you’re driving.” And he said: “I’ve just won the lottery and I’m finished after this.” I had a lucky escape.

That I still don’t understand life. When I was young, I thought at some point I would find somebody who does. I am 45, and there is a good chance that I’ll never meet somebody like that.

Now. I’ve learned to adjust my expectations to reality better than when I was 20 or 10.

I would like to come out at 16 or 17, and not 21.

On a personal level, the friend who is a single mum raising two kids by herself during this Covid era. She is a real hero. If a historical personality, I choose Mikhail Gorbachev, who probably saved the world from world war three.

When my dog died a couple of years ago. We were in Greece on vacation and a friend was watching her at home, and she was bitten by a snake. We rushed home, but we were too late by a few hours.

When I was 16, at the beginning of the summer vacation, I worked in a factory that made industrial valves and I was a much worse industrial valve producer than historian.