Handing out leaflets for a European coach trip wearing just lederhosen, in February and March in Surrey. It was freezing, and I got fired.

I worked in my aunt’s bar in Dundalk for about eight years and I remember cleaning the whole bar, including the bathrooms, after a particularly rough St Patrick’s Day.

I worked for a company that stripped an office, including the furniture, over one weekend – so I worked for 48 hours straight.

Working in farming in Somerset at 18, there were elements that were awful, and they were all really edifying. I mean, feeding chickens in sleet was hard work but I am so glad I did it.

The problem with my job is that you meet people you admire and then you don’t admire them so much. The only one I carried on admiring was Nelson Mandela.

Recently, when I got out of hospital and into my own bed with my wife and 10-year-old son; we watched some crap television and life had never seemed better.

I would have behaved better to my first wife, and the girl I lived with afterwards. I was always away.

Comfort, warmth and security.

I’d like to say sorry to my mother. I had to choose between my parents, and I chose my father because he didn’t have any other kids. (My mother was a war widow and had two children from her first marriage.) I thought, in a childish way, that one had to be fair. It was very difficult for my mother and me, and we never really got over it.