Today is particularly piercing on this score, the death of Denis Waterman, Thaw’s co-star in The Sweeney, having just been announced. Sheila has also been made a dame (a proper one), an accolade she took in her stride while reflecting on the type of society that created such things, which leads me to mention that her political views are expanded upon here. So refreshing to read a book with a person's views and opinions written down exactly how they said them and felt them - she wrote the book as herself and didn't try to be anything or anyone else - loved it! To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.

Oh, I do agree – and the wonderful thing about getting older is that you can be a bit cantankerous and odd. It’s 20 years now since Hancock’s second husband, John Thaw, died of oesophageal cancer – the same disease that took her first, the actor Alec Ross, 31 years earlier – and I wonder if the isolation born of Covid-19 painfully reinforced the state of widowhood.

The book opens well with some cracking stories and I settled down for what I thought would be a really good read.

Let’s just say that Boris Johnson and some of his cronies, along with Trump, were not, and never will be, on her Christmas card list.

In my opinion, I did feel there was too much ranting about politics and Brexit for my taste, but it’s clearly a passionate topic for her. I liked the diary style of the book and her feisty approach to the huge challenges of the pandemic for an older person with health issues living alone.