At the age of 11 I was about 6 ft. tall and my voice had completely broken. That caused problems. I was this gangly spotty very unattractive kid. I wasn't cool and I wasn't a nerd. I didn't even want to fit in with anyone.

At my age the only problem is with remembering names. When I call everyone darling it has damn all to do with passionately adoring them but I know I'm safe calling them that. Although of course I adore them too.

We have become a society that can't self-correct that can't address its obvious problems that can't pull out of its nosedive. And so to our list of disasters let us add this fourth entry: we have entered an age of folly that - for all our Facebooking and the twittling tweedle-dee-tweets of the twitterati - we can't wake up from.

Light and funny has a more compelling quality when you're younger. But I haven't abandoned the genre: I love falling down I love Lucille Ball. It's just that a lot of those stories revolve around problems that I can't convincingly portray at this age.

Old age is a special problem for me because I've never been able to shed the mental image I have of myself - a lad of about 19.

I have the problems of I must confess old age.