Near the end of the Second World War, I must have been about four, and we were in a canvas shelter in my house with my mother and father. The bombs were dropping and I was getting frightened and my mother cuddled me and said: “It’s all right, don’t worry, it’s only God moving his furniture around”, and that put me at ease I’ve never forgotten that, and every time there’s a thunderstorm I always remember it and it just calms me down.
As a young boy, humour was survival. I would have been about eight or nine when I met with a load of lads in a pretty tough area, and being very small and slight I had to work out how to not get beaten up. So I quickly observed that if you make somebody laugh, they’ll be more likely to become your friend than your enemy.
