I remember one Christmas, or it might have been my birthday, asking for a game of Go. Came the big day and my parents hade bought me the Waddingtons game of that name, which was I believe a sort of travel-around-the-world game, which is not what I wanted at all. I was after the Chinese or Japanese game of Go played with white and black stones on a wooden board criss-crossed with black lines. I politely pointed this out and my parents kindly took it back and managed to find me what I wanted. It is so complicated I still can't play the game, but have great fun playing Go-ban, which is like an open-ended Connect 4, and which Go players play as a sort of between-games breather. It might amuse you to know that the name on the box it came in was Nintendo. Anyway, I have felt mean and ungrateful ever since.

I remember, at a free concert in Hyde Park during the Sixties, hitting John Peel on the shoulder with a rolled-up copy of International Times.

I remember reading somewhere that John Peel was the late DJ's pseudonym, which he used "for family reasons". For years I took this to mean that his real name was too obscene to be announced on radio.