And these things he had achieved currente calamo, “wielding his pen,” as Scott said of Byron, “with the easy negligence of a nobleman.”

The bolts have to be opened and closed in the right combination to avoid scenes worthy of a French farce. But I feel less a character in ‘Whoops! There go my trousers’, and more like something miserable by [Samuel] Beckett or [Franz] Kafka about the meaningless of life, and the fatuity of communication.

You think someone's been following you? That's just your imagination.

Despite a couple of rustications, he gained an exhibition to Cambridge.