An astronaut enjoyed my first book so much that he took my picture to space. This does sound pretty incredible and I wouldn’t believe it myself if I didn’t have some evidence. I’ve got a photograph of Piers Sellers (the spaceman) holding a photocopied jacket shot of me against the window of a space shuttle. You can see Planet Earth through the glass, 115 miles below.
Without doubt I have been at my happiest in the small hours after a comedy gig, the audience gone, laughs still echoing from the walls, enjoying a drink with the other comics, mind still buzzing into the night.
Biography-writing is always an eye-opening, perception-confounding experience. Never have I found this to be more true than in my research for my new book about masterchef Heston Blumenthal. The classy man with the common touch, he truly represents the best of Berkshire.
Toska. It’s the Russian word for longing – a particular kind of longing, of nostalgia for home and country and one’s own. It’s what all Russian exiles suffered from.
The Observer revealed that between 2001-8 there were ‘more than 1,750 leaks, breakdowns or other “events”’ in Britain’s nuclear facilities (including Aldermaston and Burghfield in Berkshire)
Oh, lovely David Tennant. I saw him at a party once and was paralysed with yearning.