Peter Silverton

1. When were you happiest?

Now.

2. What is your principal defect?

Irritability and its inevitable consequences.

3. What makes you depressed?

All the usual irritable middle-aged man things: bureaucracy, uniforms, puritanism, Cassandras, death.

4. What do you most dislike about your appearance?

That there is considerably more to it than there used to be.

5. What is your favourite word?

Lunch.

6. What is your most unappealing habit?

Telling other people they’re wrong.

7. What is your favourite smell?

Loved ones’ skin.

8. What is your guiltiest pleasure?

Salted nuts.

9. Who are your favourite writers?

James Brown, Tom Waits, Jill Sobule, Lorenz Hart, William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, AJ Liebling.

10. What is the worst job you've done?

Working with a clutch of diet and fashion crazed female editors on a Sunday magazine.

11. When did you last cry, and why?

A few years ago, in Hemel Hempstead. It’s where I lived as a child

12. What do you most value in you friends?

That they put up with me.

13. What gift would you most like to possess?

Charm.

14. What was your most embarrassing moment?

Failing English O level.

15. What is your most treasured possession?

My house, I guess. I’ve lived in it nearly thirty years.

16. What is the worst thing anyone's said to you?
No, of course.

17. If you could edit your past, what would you change?

Upsetting people and not even realising I’d done it.

18. If you could go back in time, where would you go?

The Blitz — to see and experience what my parents went through.

19. What is your greatest fear?

Fear.

20. What is the most important lesson life has taught you

That it is finite.