| My hair colour: | White as snow and thin as rainwater. | |
| My eye colour: | Grey – with red bits in the white when I spend too long at the computer. | |
| My shoe size: | About nine – same as my mental age. | |
| My star sign: | Capricorn (the goat – well, my first name is Billy!) | |
| My favourite book when child: | My ONLY book was Enid Blyton's "Island of Adventure". | |
| My favourite fictional character: | The Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz – I'd probably prefer someone else, if I only had a brain. | |
| Books that inspired me to become a writer: | The complete works of Sir Walter Scott – a historical novelist who lived and died almost 200 years ago. | |
| My favourite author: | American thriller-detective writer Raymond Chandler – though Will Shakespeare is pretty good too. | |
| My ideal reading position: | On a train. I'm usually disappointed when I have to get off! | |
| My usual means of marking a place in a book: | Open and face down on the floor when I read in bed. | |
| My favourite time of year: | All of them. | |
| My favourite time of day: | Waking up. It's good to wake up because at least it proves you're still alive. | |
| My best time for working: | Morning. I burst from the starting blocks like Linford Christie and then gradually slow down. | |
| The first piece of writing I was paid for was: | When I did an English essay for my friend Brian's homework and he gave me sixpence. | |
| My favourite TV show: | Ceefax. No, honest, I rarely watch anything else. | |
| My favourite actor: | Humphrey Bogart. What a star, what a hero, what a mackintosh. | |
| My favourite song: | The French or the Welsh national Anthems. Can't understand a word, but they really move me. | |
| The creaure comfort I would most unwillingly relinquish: | Bed. | |
| My favourite sweet food: | Vanilla ice cream (especially the dense Lyons' cylinders we used to have) | |
| My favourite sweet food: | Green Jelly babies – especially their heads. | |
| My favourite savory food: | Sardines – especially their heads. | |
| My typical bedtime is: | 10:00 p.m. with a book. Lights out at 10:30 and asleep by 2:00 a.m. if I'm lucky. | |
| My favourite year of childhood: | Age 11 when I was captain of a football team – heaven! | |
| My mousemat design: | I don't use a mat. I prefer the desk top which has a sort of pine design. It's a fine pine design and all mine. | |
| The tidiest place in my home is: | My room when I've just finished a book and cleared up. | |
| The untidiest place in my home is: | Daughter Sara's bedroom. Imagine a meteor striking a jumbo jet and sending it crashing onto a high speed train? Then you have a picture. | |
| The working tool I would least like to do without: | Nothing really. It's the ideas that matter not the pencils and paper and computers … but I do like my Encyclopaedia Britannica on CD-ROM! | |