Nobody ever forgets their first night in the bush. It's among the precious, meagre handful of life firsts that remain indelible.

Sport is how poor kids from poor countries pass through the eye of the needle to riches and recognition.

I still secretly believe that afternoons are the time for the test card and you shouldn't watch television when the sun is out.

Nobody ever forgets their first night in the bush. It's among the precious, meagre handful of life firsts that remain indelible.

All my life I've been aware of the Second World War humming in the background. I was born 10 years after it was finished, and without ever seeing it. It formed my generation and the world we lived in. I played Hurricanes and Spitfires in the playground, and war films still form the basis of all my moral philosophy. All the men I've ever got to my feet for or called sir had been in the war.

Television in the 1960s & 70s had just as much dross and the programmes were a lot more tediously patronising than they are now. Memory truncates occasional gems into a glittering skein of brilliance. More television, more channels means more good television and, of course, more bad. The same equation applies to publishing, film and, I expect, sumo wrestling.

We like to see death as an unfair conspiracy, and what we want is a magic practitioner, a combination of Dr Watson and Sherlock Holmes.