When I was about 18, I worked on the chicken counter in a large supermarket, and every morning I had to pierce 64 birds on to industrial skewers to load up the rotisserie. That was very grim.

When I was a kid I had a Saturday job in the stockroom of a supermarket. I remember everything in there being a little bit grubby and slightly sticky. We’d do things like play rugby with a swiss roll. I think of it every time I go shopping.

Working as the assistant to an agony aunt on a women’s magazine. When we didn’t get enough heartbreaking letters, we made them up.

Delivering papers in the freezing cold for my granny. I got paid in Panini football stickers, so it wasn’t all bad.

Jazz, Delicious Hot, Disgusting Cold by the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. Whenever Rik and I got stuck writing a script, we would put this on and the world would immediately seem to be a more stupidly brilliant place again.

I practise stoicism. Not the stiff-upper-lip, modern stuff, but the ancient Greek philosophy. You have to accept what you can’t change. I try to face forwards all the time. When that doesn’t work, I think about buying a machine gun.

I hit a bit of lumpy tarmac driving my motorbike over the Pyrenees in the early 1980s. There was no safety barrier and I found myself riding along the edge of a precipice on half the width of the tyres for 100 yards.

My granddaughter is only one, but she gives the best hugs. That’s when I’m happiest at the moment.

Not doing Top Of The Pops when The Young Ones’ single went to number one.

I only ever wanted to be an actor or a rock star. I was suspended from school in the sixth form and allowed back only when I promised to join the army. But I lied.