I selected a random address in Barkingside as a setting for a script. It was the first script Frank Muir bought when he was setting up the comedy department for LWT. He rang up and said, ‘Bute Road, Barkingside? I once had sex there.’

…there was always an interesting thing where Frank Richards, the author of the ‘Billy Bunter’ stories, was having to turn out so many Bunter stories because of his gambling addiction. These were mentioned in an essay that George Orwell wrote, that were basically talking about how the Billy Bunter stories were just holding up the traditional British Empire values of racism and class consciousness in an approving light with the author apparently finding all foreigners amusing, and being very patronizing towards foreigners and women. Orwell wrote a very capable essay decrying all this, and foolishly, Frank Richards, stung by this review, decided to retaliate in a little letter where, in very wounded terms, went through all of Orwell’s points and tried his best to dismiss them. But he said, ‘As for Mr. Orwell’s point about me depicting foreigners as being comical, well, they are!’

“Why did my husband decide to take his own life?” asks the first woman.

“What?” Sylvia says. The woman is crying so hard, Sylvia can’t understand her.

“Why did my husband decide to take his own life?” the woman repeats.

“He was bipolar,” Sylvia says.

The next woman walks to the microphone.

“I have a strained relationship with my daughter,” she begins. “And I want to know …”

“Your daughter is strange,” interrupts Sylvia.

I have met Count Dracula. The real one. Some years ago, while researching an article about Transylvania, I was introduced to the charming and erudite man who was heir to the region spoken of in Bram Stoker’s book. Having been exiled to Germany with his family throughout the Ceausescu years, the authentic count had returned to reclaim his legacy, and was in the process of restoring his baronial castle, which nestled in the shadow of the Carpathian mountains.

He recounted how, in 1992, while still fighting to reclaim his birthright, he’d wandered into a cinema showing Francis Ford Coppola’s awkwardly titled Bram Stoker’s Dracula. He watched the perverted version of his heritage on screen with a growing sense of frustration. When Gary Oldman, playing Dracula, introduced himself with the line, “I am Vlad, prince of Szekely”, the real count could contain himself no longer. He stood up and shouted across the auditorium: “No, you are not! I am!”