However light-hearted you try to be about it, the loss of youth, and everything that goes with it, is quite a trauma.

I get just as much of a thrill out of constructing a good sentence that gets a laugh at the end as I do from a joke

The English like eccentrics. They just don't like them living next door.

I thought a dignified thing to do would be to live in the country by the time I'm 50 and write books

I am full of gratitude for my life - and for this house.

I, as you may know, am no stranger to the organic courgette, but I still cannot work out who these gay footballers are.

A lot of gay men have a lot of sex. That's what we do. But I've stopped all that-the revolving door into my bedroom. Promiscuity. That was of its day, really.