Don't forget this club nearly went out of extinction last year.

In hindsight, that time out of football gives you the hunger to want to get back to basics and play football.

When you're a kid that's all you want to do, go out and play football.

You can take a sidewards step in the Premier League, go to a team in the Championship or come to a team in League One.

The wider your readership, the greater the chances of offending your readers.

Wherever I go in the world, people all know about Scotland Street and are always asking me about what's going to happen to the characters next.

Who can't like pigs? They're wonderful creatures! I've always liked pigs.

With '44 Scotland Street' I found myself having to work out how a daily novel works, and it is completely different to a conventional novel.

Writers obviously have to bear witness to the harsh face of the age.

Writing fiction, I really just sit there and it just comes.

You do not have to ladle on the impasto to make a point about human frailty or ambitions.

You're always told by your publisher that you must only write one book a year and some years you should perhaps write none at all.

Baboons take a bit of getting to know but, apparently, once you break the ice, so to speak, they are complex and interesting creatures with elaborate societies.

But you cannot expect every writer to dwell on human suffering. I think my books do deal with grave issues. People who say they are too positive probably haven't read them.

Every novel presents a slice of life. A noir policier for example presents one slice, one that perhaps addresses social dysfunction or some sort of pathology, while mine present a slice that is more upbeat and affirmative.

Every single day, I get letters - very moving, overwhelming letters - testifying how much my books have meant to people in times of crisis in their lives, when they were very ill, say. If I ever doubted that writing could play an important part in people's lives, I don't doubt that now.

Fiction is able to encompass books that are bleak and which dwell on the manifold and terrible problems of our times. But I don't think that all books need to have that particular focus.

I think people in Botswana are pleased that my books paint a positive picture of their lives and portray the country as being very special. They've made a great success of their country, and the people are fed up with the constant reporting of only the problems and poverty of the continent. They welcome something which puts the positive side.

I would certainly never consider myself a Renaissance Man; I'm not fit to look at the dust from the chariot wheels of many of those who have gone before me.

I would never inflict my bassoon on anybody really other than the long suffering audiences that come to the concerts of The Really Terrible Orchestra; which actually is really terrible.