Leader of the opposition. I worked with the police service in Northern Ireland and then ran the Crown Prosecution Service. In each of those jobs, if something needed fixing, I could fix it. As leader of the opposition, you are not in power and it’s the most frustrating job I’ve ever had, and a job I hope I don’t have for much longer.

In a Dagenham factory at 6am, picking soldiers’ greatcoats from wars around the world to sell at the market in Chelsea. I smelled like mothballs, and no one would come near me.

I was a bailiff for half a morning. I couldn’t stand 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.

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

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.

Comfort, warmth and security.

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.

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.