The failed attempt at a home perm on myself in the 80s. I wanted to look like Kelly McGillis in Top Gun.

I shucked oysters for a day without the proper knife or gloves. I had to go to hospital as I’d ripped my hands up. I can’t recommend it as a career option.

The only job I quit was, aged about 23, subediting a “men’s” magazine. My job was typing out readers’ pornographic fantasies. I started wishing people would reproduce by splitting down the middle.

At the BBC, in the old days, a piece of paper was sent to various households for them to report on what they’d watched that week. In my early 20s, I collated the data. It was deeply boring.

Lovely but useless.

I worked with Stephen Fry recently and we had a real heart-to-heart. I asked: “What was it like being in prison for being gay?” And thank God someone came in and he didn’t hear me say it. I was mixing him up with when he played Oscar Wilde. I could picture him in his cell.

Thinking that I’m right when I’m wrong. But not only that – being able to convince other people I’m right and then finding out I’m wrong.

Thinking I’ve upset somebody.

That money doesn’t buy happiness.

I remember going to my auntie Pauline’s house in winter when I was eight or nine and she made me a roast beef sandwich. I ate it and fell asleep next to a fire. I felt like a cat, fed and left to nap.