Because that’s when the sky fell in a bit. I also thought, ah, I now have an angle to my book – I can take a course of action in the present day on behalf of the boy that I was. What I do a lot, which my father would never do, is I go and apologise to the child and they say, ‘God, you're always saying "sorry"' to which I say, ‘Sorry'."

Painted battleship grey, the Palm House survived the bombing of London during the second world war. Incredibly, it was almost demolished in the 1950s due to its poor state of repair. In the 1980s it was restored after being dismantled like “an immense Meccano kit”. But the humidity means that a further restoration is due. In this age of climate crisis it is needed more than ever to teach new generations about the importance of rainforests and endangered palms. They were good as gold [laughs]. I kept my part in that by not namedropping in the refectory. It felt like going into the fire. Stop running, Alan. Stop hiding. It's time to face the fire A Many Splintered Thing". BBC Comedy Guide. Archived from the original on 28 June 2007 . Retrieved 18 August 2009.

What is Alan Davies' net worth?

In 2016, you started a part-time MA in creative writing at Goldsmiths University . Was that to help tell this story?

This was not a well-lit photo and there was evidently no art department on hand to choose bedclothes. Again there was no indication of where or who they were, or whether they should have been at school that day. But this one bore a logo in the corner, Teens, a word now made ugly, a mask of everyday normality thrown over a private peepshow. The font was swirly and colourful as on a child’s birthday card, with puffed-up letters squidging against one another. Alan Davies is a comedian, but the humour here is dark. He begins his story driving through the countryside as an adult trying to decide what to do with his father’s stash of pornographic photos of teenage boys. BBC cancels 'Whites', the sitcom starring Alan Davies". Comedy.co.uk. 1 March 2011 . Retrieved 25 August 2015. Although the edges of this tradition have been worn down over the centuries, its residue is still visible in presumptions of male dominance, inhibitions against state interference in domestic life, the widespread exemption of parents from charges of assault against each other and their children, and in the oft quoted ‘sanctity’ of the nuclear family unit among conservative politicians. The family is special. Novelist and politician Shintaro Ishihara described Breasts and Eggs as “unpleasant and intolerable”, which might be another way to say that it is not afraid of sperm, used menstrual pads, poverty and the working poor. Natsuko’s language, as translated by Bett and Boyd, is actually quite polite. I had the feeling of listening to someone speaking in the dark: casual intimacies interspersed with fanciful, terrifying and dreamlike interludes.Daniel, Alex (2 October 2016). "On my radar: Alan Davies's cultural highlights". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 2 October 2016. I don't eat meat – I do eat seafood sometimes, but usually because there isn't a good vegetarian option. Both work and therapy have helped and Davies remains grateful to his friend Jo Brand for suggesting a therapist when he was in his late twenties (this led to eight-year therapy that seems to have had an emphasis on cognitive behaviour). Marrying at the age of 40 (he says he wasn't ready before) and having a family of his own has been transformative. Like so much British writing on Germany, Kampfner’s fine Why the Germans Do It Better is also a book about Britain. We need to see, in effect, post-Brexit Britain in a German mirror, not in a fantasy global one. This mirror does not flatter: Kampfner sees a Britain “mired in monolingual mediocrity, its reference points extending to the US and not much further”. It borrows and it shops, and lives in a nostalgic dreamworld.