What is the worst thing anyone has said to you?

When the surgeon told me I wouldn’t be able to play the cello again, in 2013. I have a herniated disc and it’s pressing on a nerve in my neck. I announced I was stopping playing in 2014. I absolutely did not want to stop.

My father was a very macho, controlling man and we clashed a lot. He told me that I would never be able to keep a husband with my attitude. He was right! I’ve had two short, unsuccessful marriages.

“You pinko!” by a Tory minister signing off at the end of an interview with me during the EU referendum campaign.

A friend said, “If you remembered everything you did, you’d kill yourself.” He’s sort of crazy, but he’s probably right.

“You can’t play Maxim de Winter with ginger hair.”

“You’re a narcissist!” From someone who was a narcissist himself.

In an audition at the Royal Court, this man called out, “Were you trained?”

I was called the N-word in Romford, by someone stepping off a train as I was getting on.

Is that the final mix?

Loved you in Dallas.

“Try this, you’ll love it.”

“Didn’t you used to be Graydon Carter?”

In school, I was 11, and we had to paint a picture of family life. My painting was held up to the class and I was told it looked like a spider with ink on its feet had walked across the page. It was done so viciously – humiliating.

Glenda Jackson said I was an amateur during rehearsal for The White Devil at the Old Vic. I called her a cow, but that was inadequate.

As a young actor, again at the Citizens theatre, I was making an exit and a theatregoer leaned over the balcony and said, “You’re terrible!”

My dad said, “You’re going nowhere.” I was seven or eight.

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

Edward Bond, the playwright, said I was like a turd flowing on the effluent of British culture.

Hasn’t happened yet, it’s coming.

A fellow artist called me a flaneur!