For umpteen reasons, this book should never have happened. I recently turned fifty-eight, and I’m still making a living just being myself in the public eye. I’m still a Happy Monday, I’m on television most weeks of the year and now I’m writing a new autobiography. Suffice to say, none of this would’ve been foreseeable forty years ago. You could probably argue that I’ve been rather a jammy bastard. I’ve cheated death on a number of occasions, which won’t surprise anyone who knows about my dodgy past. I’m like an extremely fortunate feline who’s used up his nine lives before he’s even left his mother’s clutches. How have I survived? I pulled it off, I reckon, from having a love of life, a bit of luck, and a determination not to die. The will to live, and to come through at the other end in one piece. I’ve had close calls throughout my life, but the important thing is that I’ve learned from them all.  

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Another thing I’m good at is doing things wrong. I don’t really know what people’s perception of me is (I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about that stuff), but my main motivation in writing this book is to record what I’ve done in my life, so that my kids and grandkids know the absolute truth about what happened in each and every case, while I can still remember it. So that they understand what drove me, for better or worse, and the book will always be there for them almost as a guide to what not to do. 

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And for anyone else reading, I think it’s a good story that’s worth telling. My life hasn’t been that unusual.