Growing up in a happy but almost bookless home, I avidly read whatever was available, namely several editions of the Observer’s Book of Cars and not a lot else. I could rattle off the cubic capacity and brake horsepower of almost every car.

Aged about ten, I saved my pocket money and was finally able to buy The World Around Us for a hefty twenty five shillings, though it proved to be something of a damp squib.

A few gifts shaped my reading life. My future sister-in-law gave me R. M. Ballantyne’s The Coral Island and The Dog Crusoe, and when I was ten, my brother bought me The Oxford Book of Birds, with beautiful colour plates of every British bird. That was a milestone, and my wife and I are still armchair ornithologists.

At school, an American teacher once asked us to write an essay about legs. I drew a blank and wrote comic verse instead. To my surprise, she loved it and read it to the class. That moment sparked something lasting.

Later, I studied Latin at university and discovered a love of epic poetry. Years later, while commuting on the Piccadilly line, I began writing poems again—among them the original Keziah Rose verse.

My aim has always been simple: to put a smile on my readers’ and listeners’ faces.