When my bowels move freely and without complications.

Last night, having dinner with the family round the kitchen table.

In 1971, I was sitting in a hotel room in London and there was a television chat show going on, debating whether Donny Osmond should be deported because of the chaos he was wreaking. And while I was watching this, there were fans on the street below, chanting my name. I was 13 and thought, “Does it get any better than this?”

Last year. I was with my wife and all my kids in northern California, driving an RV. I remember thinking that life couldn’t possibly get any better.

Catherine Corless, who spent her own money to secure birth certificates for the unrecorded dead children of the Tuam mother and baby home.

When I was seven I wanted to be a nun. When I was eight, I wanted to be a boy so that I could be anything I wanted. Also, of course, I wanted to be Samantha in Bewitched.

When Kellie Harrington won gold for Ireland in the boxing at the Paris Olympics I pumped out the briny.

Remember, if you sit at your desk for 15 or 20 years, every day, not ­counting weekends, it changes you. It just does. It may not improve your temper, but it fixes something else. It makes you more free.

When I was 17 I took on a class of six-year-olds for a week. When the Angelus rang at noon, they stood up in silence and I realised I was supposed to recite the prayer, which I did not know. I said: “There will be no Angelus today because of that child fidgeting at the back.”

I was not great with my mother-in-law, who was a very gentle woman. I thought she would be an uninvited part of my life for ever, but she died early and I wished I had been more open and patient.