I started keeping a diary in April 1969. It was always intended as a record of the way I spent my days, and nothing more than that. At that time, a month or so short of my 26th birthday, our lives revolved around our first child, Tom, then six month's old. Keeping the diary was a way of making sure that I wouldn't forget what his childhood was like...

When I’m not travelling I keep my hand in by writing up a daily diary. If you feel the same way as I do, then go out and buy yourself a good-looking note-book, put the year and the day’s date at the top of the page and start remembering tomorrow. It’ll be hard at first. There are so many reasons to give up, but, believe me, if you persevere, you’ll never regret it...

The Thirty Years Tour is a solo stage show in which Michael, aided and abetted by a rich and often rare archive of film, video, photos and recordings, looks back over three decades of his diaries. It premiered in September 2015 at the Sage Gateshead to mark the paperback publication of his latest volume Travelling To Work...