I see pictures of myself BB - before Botox - and I see the ones after and I am happy. I am on television 1,500 times a year and it is a very small way, and a safe way, of looking a little bit better than I used to.

Two days after the chemo I felt terrible, like I had a permanent migraine and had been shot in every limb. I was knackered, starving. The doctor explained that was because I had essentially been poisoned.

I sort of felt like the runt of the litter. My brother was just great. If you gave him a cricket bat he'd score 100. If he walked into a party he'd pull the best-looking girl. He was my hero.

When economist William Beveridge dreamed up the postwar welfare state he wanted to fight five 'giant evils' - want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness. Fast forward 65 years and it seems the last New Labour government grew an Unfair State that fuelled - not fought - one of those evils: idleness.

I'm an intelligent man but I don't feel I articulate or get that across nearly enough, especially in social situations.