It's not name dropping, but not many people can say, like me, that they spent the day with the likes of Francis Bacon or that boring drunk Dylan Thomas. You don't forget things like that.

One of the things that goes with getting older is that one becomes more conservative - and I emphasise that when I use the word conservative I do not mean politically.

In most betting shops you will see three windows marked 'Bet Here', but only one window with the legend 'Pay Out'.

When I was a boy, I naively thought that this thing called happiness would be something I would wake up to find every day once I could smoke, drink and fornicate.

One way to stop a runaway horse is to bet on him.

I have been commissioned to write an autobiography and I would be grateful to any of your readers who could tell me what I was doing between 1960 and 1974.

Oh, to me not drinking is like being dead, almost. I sit here taking endless journeys down memory lane. It gets boring.