Articles/Interviews

I will tell you my idea of a good evening. In bed by 6.30pm with a cheese sandwich, my four dogs around me and Radio 4 on. I listen to radio all the time, partly to block out the buzz of my tinnitus, the ringing in my ears and screaming in my head that I've suffered from for years. The dogs don't sleep in the bedroom, but they crash in first thing. That's fine - except when I'm having an attack of gout and they leap on my feet.

I have places all over the world - Barbados, Ireland, Reykjavik, Zimbabwe, Scotland - but home is Guernsey, 25 miles from St Peter Port. My wife Josephine and I have lived there for 14 years and I loved the place as soon as I saw it. I felt immediately that it was for me. It's an amazing island, so delicate. It has its own decency, its own literacy. It's like being back in 1942 - but without the war. I've found extraordinary peace there.

We're very insular. We live in a 1947 red-brick house with a large garden. A dovecote we built from old teak (we're trying to get two fantails into it), a swimming pool, the dogs and a marmalade cat. I've always had dogs an these four are my great, great friends - Tweeg the lurcher, Generali (an Italian truffle hound), a border terrier called Curlygirly and another little terrier, Bigsyboy from Biggleswade.

I take them for a walk on the beach every morning, then come back and make sure the gardener is looking after my medlar, a wonderful fruit tree that produces a fruit rather like a small brown apple and needs to be cosseted like a prima ballerina. Josephine will probably be doing something in the garden too, and when we go in she'll cook lunch - venison if we're feeling really posh and then pears in red wine. We seem besotted by that.

In the afternoon I'll take the dogs out again or get Josephine to turn on the sauna or cool the beer in the pub. I have my own pub which I've built over the garage. Members only. About three days a week I don't drink at all but, when I do drink, I drink. Lager, bitter, vodka, cr�me de menthe, whatever.

The Sun once reported that I had only two years to live but, as that was in 1987, I reckon I must be alright. The only thing that's different between my drinking and non-drinking days is that my dogs get confused: I'm faster when I'm not drinking.

I never read a book or a paper because I'm dyslexic. It's bad enough trying to learn a script. I just read it very slowly. But I'm a professional listener and, as the radios is on all day, I'm well up with the news. Exercise? Not much, apart from walking and taking out my lobster boat, the Olly Jo. Nobody sane swims. I'd rather keep afloat.

In the evenings we eat in. We don't have enough posh friends in Guernsey to have roast potatoes but, luckily, I like working-class food and I can't wait for a squeak-up - bubble and squeak is my favourite. If I cook, which isn't often, it's usually spaghetti Bolognese with all the leftovers chucked in and plenty of garlic. I don't go for fancy wines, either. Something acidic, spiked up with a drop of something else is fine by me.

My day ends when it gets dark - I really don't want to go out after dark. I put the TV on for Sky Sports - my brother Simon is a commentator for them, and I watch Katarina Witt and anything that England does, whatever the sport - and CNN. Then it's off to bed and the radio. I have the World Service on all through the night and never have any difficulty sleeping. Josephine has grown so used to it now that she can't sleep unless the radio is going. That's one of the niceties of love.