When my writing career didn’t explode as I wanted it to (that wouldn’t happen for another two years), I headed to Ramsgate town to see what work was available. My extraordinary collection of GCSEs and one-week show-ups at Thanet College afforded me the following tree of opportunity:

McDonald’s – not a chance: it looked like great fun, but I’d just lost somewhere in the region of six stone, and I didn’t want to put it all back on again in THREE hours.

Argos – another no: the staff always looked miserable, and there were rumours that one guy was SO depressed by the place that he’d wandered into the back to get a microwave for a customer, proceeded right through the rear exit and kept going. They never saw him again.

Burton’s – I thought it would be slightly wrong to work in a clothes shop when you’d never been able to afford any of the clothes: I’d have been a class traitor.

Dixon’s – I knew two guys who worked in Dixon’s at the time: one was trying to change his name legally to ‘Jonas Piemunch’ and the other would regularly pop outside for the sort of cigarettes you smoked if you wanted to run down the High Street with dragons chasing you.