Q. Which other EAFOL 2016 participant are you most excited about? I'm excited about meeting someone I haven't met before. I can't tell you their name because I don't know who they are. All I can tell you is that in great festivals there are often moments - unexpected encounters and conversations from which friendships flow. Q. What books are you reading now? I always have at least half a dozen books on the go. There are science books for horrible science research - so right now there's one on mad experiments. At present I am crazy about really obscure medieval history - so I'm reading a couple of those and then I have an array of books I like to dip into. Q. Which literary character would you invite for dinner, and why? I would like to invite the hungry caterpillar to dinner because I am pretty sure it wouldn't complain about my cooking. The problem is the caterpillar might make my cat nervous. We could go to a restaurant but I might feel self-conscious talking to a caterpillar with people staring at me. Q. Which word would you remove? I am not sure if it's in the dictionary but I am grinding my teeth to powder every time I hear that something is 'iconic'. If it's not an icon, it's not iconic. Unless they're being ironic and confused a consonant. Q. Who would illustrate the story of my life? It would have to be my wonderful illustrator Tony De Saulles. Over the years I have grown quite fond of Tony's cartoons of me. If Tony's too busy then I would ask my brother Frank as he does a mean cartoon of me and knows about my life too.