Generally, we admire the thing we are not.

Norwich is a fine city. None finer. If there is another city in the United Kingdom with a school of painters named after it, a matchless modern art gallery, a university with a reputation for literary excellence which can boast Booker Prize-winning alumni, one of the grandest Romanesque cathedrals in the world, and an extraordinary new state-of-the-art library then I have yet to hear of it.

Why should I be depressed? I've got enough money. I've got a job. People like me. There is no to be depressed. That's at stupid as saying there is no reason to have asthma or there is no reason to have the measles. You know you've got it. It's there. It's not about reason.

Because, let's face it, I do not get offered the parts that Brad Pitt has just turned down.

I think I'm most nervous about revealing how nervous I have always been. People think me calm, confident, poised. Inside I'm a jelly.

Many people would no more think of entering journalism than the sewage business - which at least does us all some good.

A real education takes place, not in the lecture hall or library, but in the rooms of friends, with earnest frolic and happy disputation.