First thing’s first: I need to qualify what follows with the caveat that I cannot be relied upon to give an accurate account of myself. Having said that, I was born in north London in 1974. This means that, for the first time, my sporting heroes are all now younger than me.

I’ve been a bespoke tailor, a curtain maker, a journalist and now a writer. I’ve travelled to twenty-one countries (San Marino counts as a country; I don’t care what anyone says) and the highlight of my trips abroad is the hour I spent with the mountain gorillas in Rwanda. You haven’t been brushed gently aside by anything until you’ve been brushed gently aside by a silverback gorilla who wants to get somewhere and you’re in the way.

The author I admire most is P.G. Wodehouse. ‘Plum’, as we his friends call him, is often overlooked when great writers are spoken about. I can only imagine that is because he writes comedy and comedy is just not taken seriously enough. Plum is not referred to simply as ‘The Master’ for no reason at all. His ability to construct comedic situations, the way Hitchcock would create suspense and terror, over a novel length, is second to none. And no one before or since could write dialogue as if spinning gold in quite the same way. Moreover, even Shakespeare would, if confronted with a list of Wodehouse similies, bow to a far greater talent. Here are just a few examples:

The smile vanished from his face, like breath off a razor blade.

She stared at Berry, stolidly, like a cow inspecting a turnip.

[Jeeves’ cough was] like a sheep clearing its throat of a blade of grass on a distant hillside.


Then again, I sometimes think that if I could have anyone’s talent it would be Woody Allen’s.

More essential miscellany (as opposed to useless trivia):

I like the sound ducks make when they land on water. The nicest smell in the world is that of frying peppers. I get quite angry at misuse of the apostrophe. I am intimidated by moving stairs. I wonder why there are numbers printed inside toilet rolls. I can watch every minute of every hour of every day of a five-day cricket match. I have no star sign; it’s the darndest thing. I don’t smoke but comfort eat apples. My greatest achievement to date is killing an ‘unkillable’ bamboo plant. As a Londoner, I pronounce weasle, treacle and beetle as weesool, treacool and beetool. I am a Taoist.