I’ve always been an early riser. Oh yes… I’ve always got a h**d-on in the morning. I think it all started when I left school and became a monk. People think monks walk around with their heads bowed because they’re being humble. F*** off! They bow their heads because they’ve got a stalk on.

uckily, when I came out, I met this fantastically lecherous girl called Bertha. After a few days of furious sh**ging, I somehow forgot all about God and realised my first love was the devil. I’m still interested in the devil but, at my age, the devil is not interested in me.

When I do get out of bed — usually at 6 or 7 — I make my wife a cup of coffee. If the shops are open, I’ll pop out and get some nice bread and drive around for a while listening to the Today programme. I never bother with the newspapers because I get them online. On the nights when I can’t sleep, I get up about 3 o’clock, switch the computer on and go through two or three of the main stories and the obituaries. Never miss the obituaries.

Breakfast is whatever my wife decides to cook and I’ll sit at the table watching her. Sometimes I applaud her if she makes a particularly wonderful movement. I have to make sure my wife knows she’s appreciated, because if she ever left me I’d be totally and utterly f***ed. She instinctively knows all the s**t that I don’t want to deal with and says: “Leave that to me, dear.” Isn’t that a wonderful thing?

If I’m not working, I have to decide how I’ll fill my day. I might have a bath or a shower, I might not. Do I smell? I hope not. I might lie down and read a book.

Occasionally, I’ll grab a tin of biscuits and walk out into the street to see if there’s someone who will take a biscuit from me. Usually I end up talking to a dog.

This morning a man stopped me in the street. He was with his two young boys and they had a book they wanted me to sign. I thought they were going to ask their father who this strange old man was, but they know me from the DVD. We talked about monsters and I had my photo taken with them. You should have seen the pleasure in this man’s face. Young fella, he was… about 36.

The thing about being a children’s hero is that you grow up with them. Every time they see me, they’re catapulted back to a time when they were young and happy and they could run upstairs. Everywhere I go people smile at me and it puts me in good spirits. I am very grateful to have once been a children’s hero. Mind you… I have to admit that I am a bit of a sh**ged-out old hero these days.

At lunchtime, I pour my wife a nice glass of rosé and make her a cheese-and-ham sandwich. Or bubble and squeak. I like living on scraps. I never sit down at the table with her. Too restless, you see. She has to sit there and listen to my terrible stories, but somehow I always seem to make her laugh. My wife is rather a shy, darling girl, but I can make her howl with laughter. When I first met her it didn’t lead to much, but after a while I realised that life was going to be wonderful and I finally had a reason to shrug off my Soho past. Back then, I’d go from the Colony Room to the Coach and Horses to Gerry’s… The room would be spinning, but I couldn’t go home. Gin was my drink. Jeffrey Bernard used to say: “Tom, you must have a head of steel.”

Thankfully, after I met Sue, I realised I’d found the inspiration to be able to walk past the Coach and Horses and go home. I would gaze through the window and listen to the gales of laughter and say: “Come on, you can crack this.” And I did. I would walk to the station, get on the train and go home to my darling wife.

In the afternoon I go out for a drive. I never have the faintest idea where I’m going, but there might be a vague plan to buy a new mop or have a look at the new range of Rowenta irons. If I’m very lucky, I’ll bump into a few older ladies in the shop and I’ll watch as their titties begin to tingle. When I was a younger man, I used to go cruising in the kitchen department of Peter Jones in Chelsea.

By about 6 o’clock, I know I have to go home to start preparing the evening meal. We’ve got a fabulous kitchen — all the fancy gadgets. Lovely knives and chopping boards. I do all the chopping, scraping and pressing the garlic. I always wash as I go along, which my wife hates. She’s never rated my washing-up. If I’m lucky, there’ll be a Guinness in the fridge, which I’ll drink while my wife cooks. Again, there will be more applause. I like what I call “fancy cafe food”. Pasta with peppers and ham, fillet steak, potatoes, chopped cabbage, turkey escalope. Perhaps some cheese and fruit for dessert.

My wife watches TV in the evening. Usually one of those f***ing cookery programmes. Of course, she treats this like high drama, but I just shout at the screen: “F*** off, s**tface!” She gets no peace if I’m in the room, so that’s when I slope off to do my ironing. I’ve always been good at ironing. You should see my shirts. I iron my undies, too, but never my socks.

I always go to bed before my wife, but will sit there listening to the radio and reading a book for a couple of hours. When she does come to bed, she still has to put up with me shouting at the radio: “Oh, f*** off! What a load of w**k!” Very quietly, she’ll say: “Please, dear, don’t say that while I’m trying to sleep.”

Interview by Danny Scott.
Portrait by Dominick Tyler