And then later on I developed appendicitis, which was very annoying. That had to be attended to and meant getting into hospital for a bit of time and in those days when I had it... that's over 40 years ago now... it wasn't an in and out in 24 hours business, you had to stay 10 days in hospital. So that was very time consuming.

And then I developed cancer. I was a very heavy smoker and I think there's no doubt that smoking does cause cancer, not in everybody, but it can. I mean WO Bentley died at 84 and he smoked so many fags, he was almost a chain smoker, but it didn't kill him. He died of... well, just old age, but even so I think it does... can have an effect if one prolongs the habit. And that had to be got over and that came at a very unfortunate time because I had just been appointed master of the Clockmakers' Company and I had to make quite a lot of speeches and I really didn't have much of a voice after the radium treatment. And so I practiced and acquired a small microphone and amplifier and I practised assiduously with that and so I was ready to go to my first court meeting and I planned to put this amplifier on the table and use a microphone attached to my lapel. And I didn't know how the court would take this but I reasoned that I was master and I could jolly well do what I liked, so I went ahead and did it and it all went off very smoothly and after a while one just didn't notice that I was speaking into this microphone all the time. And so that overcame that problem, but the voice has never fully recovered, but you know, one is lucky to survive the whole thing so one can't really complain about the after effects, and indeed I don't.  I never stop talking so obviously it didn't do me any harm.