The death of my wife: I’d happily have gone first.

I would try to work on being able to trust people more easily.

I should have known that I might not like what my brain scan showed, just as I should have known that the symptoms of prostatism that were increasingly bothering me were just as likely to be caused by cancer as by the benign prostatic enlargement that happens in most men as they age. But I continued to think that illness happened to patients and not to doctors, even though I was now retired. Twenty months after I had my brain scanned, I was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer. I had had typical symptoms for years, steadily getting worse, but it took me a long time before I could bring myself to ask for help. I thought I was being stoical when in reality I was being a coward. I simply couldn’t believe the diagnosis at first, so deeply ingrained was my denial.

I would have thought more about exercise and a healthy lifestyle in my 20s, 30s and 40s.

Sydney mardi gras, 1993.

My cold indifference towards discarded friends.

I’ve made some terrible remarks about people over the years in the interests of light entertainment, and I regret them all.

A gig in Chatham.

Running out of Molecule cologne.

Dame Joan Collins. She insists on being happy whatever is going on and, despite being a Tory, is a very caring person.