My manager and friend Colin Lester, who has protected me through the good times and the bad.

My grandson, for taking such wonderful care of me in my old age.

Russell Brand, for being his own man.

Just look at a Dalai Lama and Mother Teresa and Aung San Suu Kyi and Nelson Mandela, and you’ll see that one of the outstanding characteristics of each one of these is how they have poured themselves out prodigally on behalf of others, of their being so utterly selfless.

I don’t know. Probably Alice, maybe. But we were contemporaries, Alice Munro. I think it was probably most in poetry. I was of that age to get influenced. After a while, you don’t get influenced because your brain has turned to cement.

Where to begin? How about working the archery range at the Sportsman’s Show in 1956? “The pointy part of the arrow goes at the front.” Or going door-to-door in 1963, when I was a questionnaire re-writer for a market research company, asking a 36-page questionnaire about bowel movements for a laxative company. “No one is going to answer 36 pages on that!” I bleated. “They’ll kick me out after three pages!” “Ah, but those who don’t,” they said – “those are our target market!”

The only way out is through.

Of a painless disease, with a month’s warning, on a spring day, with some good news in hand.

Block? Not as such, but I've had to throw things out because they weren't working. Sometimes I just get lazy, but that's not the same a s a block.

A canoe, mixed sun and cloud, no deadlines in sight.