First I wanted to be in the circus, then a tap dancer, then prime minister. I have failed at all three.

Not a lawyer, which was what I told everyone, because my father wanted me to be one.

A writer, I’m sorry to say. Boring, I know, but true.

First loved, then laid, then paid.

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.

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

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 find it really interesting the way people are drawn to power, usually male power, sometimes in its dark mode. I wonder what they get from it. My experience of bastards is that there is very little material benefit gained from being in their company, though you feel there might be, any minute. Or you get something for a while and then the polarity switches. It’s a huge con. Trump made the mechanism clear – in this, I think he is a timely figure.

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

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.