Busy people are happy people. When I was 10, the headteacher at my school, Mr Stocks, who was 82, gave me those five words of advice. And they have informed and directed my entire life. I think I found they were true at school, where I was very happy and very busy and probably very irritating. And I’ve not dared stop since.
My parents met over a game of Monopoly, the first set sold in the UK. My father bought it at Selfridges in 1937. He took it back to his digs at Gower Street and there was my mother, a student. A few weeks later, they eloped. Years later I became European Monopoly champion.
I didn’t realise until recently how much my parents sacrificed for their five children. My father was a successful lawyer and my mother was a very fine English teacher. But they sent all of us to independent schools – and the fees were considerable. I now realise my father had money worries all his life. One of my lasting images of him is sitting in the kitchen, cigarette in one hand, cup of tea in the other, poring over the bills, trying to work out which to pay first.
From the age of six or seven I went to school on my own, on the underground. Or so I thought. My mother told me, not long before she died – she lived to 96 – that in fact she was in the next-door carriage, keeping an eye on me.
I started writing a biography of Shakespeare when I was 10. I haven’t finished it yet. It’s a work-in-progress.
When I was a little boy, I met TS Eliot. He was very involved in the church I was a server at and challenged me to learn Macavity: The Mystery Cat. Through him and my parents, who gave me a love of poetry, words and language, I got into learning poetry by heart.
I have spent my entire life fulfilling my childhood dreams. I wanted to be an actor, a politician, a writer. I was just ridiculous, I suppose. But I do think if you believe enough, dreams do come true.
My wife thinks I’m continuously trying to please my parents. She says to me: “They’re dead, darling.” She also tells me I’m ridiculous. She’s not wrong.
My worst habit is that I can’t stop talking. In fact, my latest show is called Gyles Brandreth Can’t Stop Talking! My wife came up with the title.
I was particularly starstruck meeting the late Queen. There was always an invisible moat around her. Nobody treated her normally, except her husband. But she was a completely natural person.
I don’t believe in regrets. Never look back. You might fall down the stairs.
I’m scared of heights and always have been. They terrify me. I used to be frightened of aeroplanes, but I’m not any more. I overcame it by being rational and realising that aeroplanes get you to exciting places and flying is by far the safest way to travel. Peter Pan is, after all, one of my heroes.
I would go back to 1880s London if I could time travel. There was a dinner then that Oscar Wilde, Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, Bram Stoker and JM Barrie attended: they all knew each other. I would love to have been at that table. What was there in the fog of London that these men breathed that enabled them to create these mythic characters that, 140 years later, are as alive as ever?
I don’t think about getting older very much. I want to exercise more, because I’ve got to keep going. But I don’t brood about it all. In fact, I celebrate.
Listen to Gyles Brandreth’s podcast, Rosebud, available on Apple or Spotify. His book, Elizabeth: An Intimate Portrait, (Penguin Michael Joseph, £25) is out now. Buy it for £20 at guardianbookshop.com
• The subheading of this article was amended on 31 December 2023 to correct Gyles Brandreth’s age; he is 75, not 71 as an earlier version said.
