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I was a bad boy as a child.

I've never been a bad boy.

The bad boy: always more fun.

I don't think my father was a bad man, all in all.

The bad-boy label is just an assumption.

I've heard I've been called a bad boy, or difficult.

Tabloid discussion of bad children always blames baby-boomer liberals, careerist mothers and fashion-crazed Nathan Barley types who think it's all enormously funny. But the centre-leftish psycho-thinker Oliver James says it's all down to the Thatcher-and-after culture of turbo-capitalism, making people acquisitive and unsatisfied.

'Alexander, Who's Trying His Best to Be the Best Boy Ever' was inspired by a combination of my grandson, my son, and myself - all those times when each of us has decided that we're just not going to get into trouble anymore. But it's so hard to be good all of the time!

People like casting me as these characters who definitely have an edge to them, but I don't really think 'bad boy' is something anyone can say about themselves without sounding stupid.