One time I got so drunk in the Soho theatre in London that I fell asleep in the disabled toilet for two hours. People still call the toilet Rosie’s Bedroom.

I was in a restaurant with my daughter in Los Angeles and I had an accident involving a stomach upset. That was mortifying for both of us.

Falling flat on my face in Billy Elliot on Boxing Day when I was 14. I fell smack bang at the end of my number. I was mortified.

I am in a public profession, so take your pick. It’s all embarrassing.

I’ve never read Proust.

And when things get tough, this is what you should do. Make good art. I’m serious. Husband runs off with a politician? Make good art. Leg crushed and then eaten by mutated boa constrictor? Make good art. IRS on your trail? Make good art. Cat exploded? Make good art. Somebody on the Internet thinks what you do is stupid or evil or it’s all been done before? Make good art. Probably things will work out somehow, and eventually time will take the sting away, but that doesn’t matter. Do what only you do best. Make good art.

My kids, and getting some of the stories I had in my head on to paper in a way that wasn’t too far removed from the thing I dreamed about writing.

Imaginative, dull, amiable.

As someone who left the world slightly more interesting than he found it.

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.