Though I started keeping a regular diary in 1969, when I was 25, I, like many people, started much earlier than that. Every year of my middle childhood my parents would give me the Lett’s Schoolboys Diary and I would try hard to fill in each day. I usually got bored by the end of February, but sometimes I kept going. Once I got almost up till my birthday in May.

I’m so glad I did persevere. These school diaries are really the only evidence of what life was like for a Sheffield schoolboy when no-one had even heard of Elvis Presley. If you’re ready for Palin’s pre-pubescent ramblings, then this is How It All Began. It’s January 1955 and I’m eleven and a half years old.