What is the worst thing anyone has said to you?

'Do you have a hobby?' It was a journalist. I went into a tirade: 'How dare you presume I'm a dabbler!'

A critic once said she wanted to lift a carpet, put me under it and hold it down until I stopped moving.

“Oh, he’s all about money.” I’ve never charged anyone in all the years I’ve been doing one-to-one work. That’s my gift to the world.

“You sing like a goat.” When I did my French album [Voila], this French woman – a supposed friend – said to my face: “It’s fantastic but, how come you sound like a chèvre?” It was like someone had hit me in the stomach.

I was opening in a play in my 20s, and my agent came on opening night, brought flowers, took me out to dinner and then told me she was no longer going to be representing me.

Growing up as a gay boy in a small town, you get used to people saying bad things pretty quickly.

“Unfortunately, Michael, I don’t think you’re ever going to work in the acting profession until you’re about 40, and then it’ll only be in minor character roles.” Drama teacher at Guildford School of Acting.

“I could never love you like that.”

There are yards and yards and yards of abuse every day. I ignore the lot of it.

I stopped drinking 18 or 19 years ago, and in an argument someone who will remain nameless said: “Oh just go and have a drink.” It was nasty.

The music journalist Paul Morley described me as bland.

A radio presenter said I had yellow teeth – to my face. When I was 45, a manager in LA said I was too old to work in Hollywood; and then she rang my agent and said, “Can you tell your client never to wear that perfume again because it made me feel sick.”

The usual racist shit.

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

“What makes you think you are so special?”

“Your cooking sucks” – before I learned to cook in Covid.

“You’re getting old.” My son Harris was factually correct, but I didn’t need to hear it.

A headmaster said I was a complete washout and I would never be any good for anything.

“Next! We’re looking for somebody else.”

This was said about me in a Radio 1 focus group: “I don’t pay my licence fee to hear scummy northerners.”