Tom Baker

I didn't care as an ex-ballet dancer wrote and told me she had seen the production and fallen in love with my legs. She said that in other circumstances she could have lived happily with my legs but that she only had a small flat in Holland Park.

The theatre couldn't match what was going on in a court of law or at football grounds. The theatre has never been able to match what goes on anywhere, that's why so few people go.

When the doctor was there, Alfred refused to believe that he'd had a stroke. "I can't have had a stroke," he grated, in a terrible rage, "I've got 93,000 pounds in my current account."

It was no problem for me to say I came from another world and could go back and forth in time in my emphysemic old Tardis which was bigger on the inside than it was on the outside. Problem? For me who believed in Guardian Angels and was convinced that pigs were possessed by devils after their New Testament encounter with God's son? It was easy and I loved it.

All my life I have felt myself to be on the edge of things. All my life I have suffered from bad dreams. All my life I have had difficulty in knowing whether I am awake or in a nightmare.

Most of my ideas were rejected and I got used to it. One can get fond of almost anything, even rejection.

Poverty can curdle the libido and corrode civilized thoughts. One's sense of humour vanishes, to be replaced by a curry-spoiling sarcasm as one's Mr Hyde emerges from the swamp of the subconscious.

I was honestly very nervous of Constance Wheatcroft. And I wasn't the only one. Her entire family was afraid of her. Dogs were afraid of her. Bindweed in the hedge would wither as she passed; birds would forget their nesting instincts and fly back to north Africa at the sound of her hideous cries.

Once a man next to me found the handle of a radiator in his mashed potato; he said nothing, merely moving it to the side of his plate after sucking the mashed potato off it first. Nobody else said anything either. If the truth was known several of us were probably jealous.

The notion that God was everywhere put paid to any possible peace of mind by the time I was six.

But it was drama, high drama: fires at night, the fires that burned people's houses away; bombs fell and left exotically shaped fragments in the form of shrapnel. And we collected it and traded it. As long as we were not hurt -- and I wasn't -- life seemed wonderful.

These days when I see a child in Waitrose and smile and say, "Hello, are you going to visit your Mum in her sheltered accommodation when you grow up?" it provokes glistening eyes and hollow laughter. And if you pursue it with, "Or are you going to be a drug dealer?" it may result in a snub.

"Stay calm, sir," I cried. "Don't excite yourself, it could mean death." He took me at my word and instantly fell inert. I didn't know whether he was obeying me or had died.

The only imperfection in life then was that we didn't really have much money.

One of the astounding qualities of that family was their capacity to fill innocent bystanders with thoughts of murder.