Fuck me. Ben is horny. He is mine for the taking. But tonight I’m not interested. What the fuck is all that about?

I have a lot of stories about trains. There are people that you’ve never met before, but for a brief time you are intrinsically connected.

I was with a friend on a train from London to Brighton, and we had nothing to say because we were bored with each other.

It was late on Saturday, and at that moment, Fatboy Slim was performing on Brighton Beach and 400,000 people had turned up and caused mayhem.

But this train was strangely quiet.

I stared through the window at blackness and saw nothing.

But I did see something.

It was the reflection of a boy, sat a few seats further forward, staring at darkness just like me.

Lost in his thoughts and dreams, I supposed he lived an incredibly exciting life.

I watched him far too long.

Then he suddenly smiled, and I smiled back, and for that passing moment I believed we were lovers.

A book that will never be published. I’m not a good writer, and I write to entertain myself. But somebody asked if Harry, from Perfectly Hard and Glamorous, is based on a real person, and I had to come clean.

He is called Harry, but where does his character came from? He is a combination of lots of people I’ve known, but he is also me.

The stories he tells are a lot of the things that happened to me. And underneath that rough image, there is a sensitivity that is really based on the quiet shy boy I once was and probably still am.

This idiosyncrasy surfaces in Harry at an early age and reveals a jealousy when he can’t have the things he wants. As I’ve got older, this unfortunate part of my psyche sometimes gets too much to bear, and on occasions has resulted in a destructive outcome. This failing is also part of Harry’s anima and he eventually turns his back on those people he cares about most.

I’ve never been violent or dishonest but sometimes wished I had. It just wasn’t part of my upbringing. And so, Harry makes up for it, as do Andy and Jack, with their brutal style of living. But Harry is distinctive from the rest.

In one of the chapters somebody says that if there were three bad boys then Harry is the best of the bunch. He has a conscience, but once that’s out of the way, anything can happen.

There is a tendency for people to make assumptions about Andy, Jack and Harry.

They see themselves in all three boys and even in some of the peripheral characters. But I stayed clear of real names and have deliberately mixed up their personalities to disguise the obvious. And the decades have allowed me to introduce people to one another when in reality they’ve never met.

There is another part to this adventure and it involves the plot line.

In between writing there is a need to earn money. This involves spending hours stood doing nothing, and hours can pass without anything to do. This is where my iPhone comes into its own.

Most of the plot has been created when most of you are tucked up in bed. Ideas reveal themselves at the most inappropriate times, and this when I start typing notes on my phone.

As always, I continue to write anonymously but should anybody ask who I am, I shall say that ‘My name is Harry.’

When I am old, I will still remember that summer. There hasn’t been one like it since, and never will be. It wasn’t the blue skies, the endless days of sun, or even the brightness of the sea. I shall remember it because of you.

I was seventeen, and you taught me to surf. And we spent a fortnight together getting wet and lounging on the beach.

I shall remember looking at you as I lay on the sand.

The crooked smile and shining eyes. That toned body and browned tan of twenty-one summers. The way the saltwater made your hair thick and wavy. And the sand, that stuck to your damp legs.

We told each other our secrets, but I couldn’t tell you the one I really wanted to reveal.

And I shall remember the trepidation of counting down the days to when I had to leave.

As each summer passes, I see you in mind’s eye, exactly as you were, all those years ago.