Working on an assembly line in a plastics factory.

Working in an abattoir.

When I was 15, I conned my way into an office job at a company that represented makers of breast implants. The manager had a wart on the end of her tongue that she’d push against her teeth, making a very specific sound.

I once had to sit on a sleigh and pretend to be Bing Crosby for a corporate party. I had to mime to White Christmas over and over again.

I behaved badly with two old lovers. Years later, when I took one to lunch to apologise, it made it worse.

Feeling you want someone else’s welfare as much and sometimes more than your own.

First a horse rancher, then a dancer.

Dr Denis Mukwege, because he is to sexualised violence against females what Mandela was to apartheid.

Since hostile people still call me a former Playboy Bunny, even at 82, I probably shouldn’t have done that in my youth, even to write an exposé. And since a couple of times they’ve also referred to me as a former CIA agent, because I went to two Soviet-era communist youth festivals, I probably shouldn’t have done that, either. Yet if I hadn’t done both, I might have judged other people by such empty symbols, too.

In my 30s, I was staring at a pair of expensive boots in a shop window when the photographer Gordon Parks came up behind me. He instantly understood, because he grew up even poorer than me; he made me buy them on my credit card.