34) Almost every day.

35) When he was drunk. He claimed that he brought the gift of eternal life.

36) At the Penta Hotel I tried to introduce him to Torvill and Dean. He was interested in meeting only members of the Stock Exchange and Fellows of the Royal Society.

37) Females of all ages.

38) Group sex.

39) Marie Drummond, twenty-two, sales assistant, HMV Records; Denise Attwell, thirty-seven, research supervisor, Geigy Pharmaceuticals; Florence Burgess, fifty-five, deaconess, Bible Society Bookshop; Angelina Gomez, twenty-three, air hostess, Iberian Airways; Phoebe Adams, forty-three, cruise protestor, Camp Orange, Greenham Common.

40) Sometimes, at his suggestion.

41) Unsatisfactory.

42) Premature ejaculation; impotence.

43) He urged me to have a sex-change operation.

44) National Gallery, Wallace Collection, British Museum. He was much intrigued by representations of Jesus, Zoroaster and the Gautama Buddha, and commented on the likenesses.

45) With the permission of the manager, NE District, British Telecom .46) We erected the antenna on the roof of the Post Office Tower.

47) 2500 KHz.

48) Towards the constellation Orion.

49) I heard his voice, apparently transmitted from the star Betelgeuse 2000 years ago.

50) Interference to TV reception all over London and the South-East.

51) No .1 in the BARB Ratings, exceeding the combined audiences for Coronation Street, Dallas and Dynasty.

52) Regular visitors included Princess Diana, Prince Charles and Dr Billy Graham.

53) He hired the Wembley Conference Centre.

54) ‘Immortality in the Service of Mankind’.

55) Guests were drawn from the worlds of science and politics, the church, armed forces and the Inland Revenue.

56) Generous fees.

57) Service tills in Mayfair and Regent Street.

58) He had a keen appreciation of money, but was not impressed when I told him of Torvill and Dean’s earnings.

59) He was obsessed by the nature of the chemical bond.

60) Sitting beside him at the top table were: (1) The Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition, (2) The President of the Royal Society, (3) The Archbishop of Canterbury, (4) The Chief Rabbi, (5) The Chairman of the Diners Club, (6) The Chairman of the Bank of England, (7) The General Secretary of the Inland Revenue Staff Federation, (8) The President of Hertz Rent-a-Car, (9) The President of IBM, (10) The Chief of the General Staff, (11) Dr Henry Kissinger, (12) Myself.

61) He stated that synthetic DNA introduced into the human germ plasm would arrest the process of ageing and extend human life almost indefinitely.

62) Perhaps 1 million years.

63) He announced that Princess Diana was immortal.

64) Astonishment/disbelief.

65) He advised the audience to invest heavily in leisure industries.

66) The value of the pound sterling rose to $8.75.

67) American TV networks, Time Magazine, Newsweek.

68) The Second Coming.

69) He expressed strong disappointment at the negative attitude of the Third World.

70) The Kremlin.

71) He wanted me to become the warhead of a cruise missile.

72) My growing disenchantment.

73) Sexual malaise.

74) He complained that I was spending too much time at Richmond Ice Rink.

75) The Royal Proclamation.

76) The pound sterling rose to $75.50.

77) Prince Andrew. Repeatedly.

78) Injection into the testicles.

79) The side-effects were permanent impotence and sterility. However, as immortality was ensured, no further offspring would be needed and the procreative urge would atrophy.

80) I seriously considered a sex-change operation.

81) Government White Paper on Immortality.

82) Compulsory injection into the testicles of the entire male population over eleven years.

83) Smith & Wesson short-barrel thirty-eight.

84) Entirely my own idea.

85) Many hours at Richmond Ice Rink trying unsuccessfully to erase the patterns of DNA.

86) Westminster Hall.

87) Premeditated. I questioned his real motives.

88) Assassination.

89) I was neither paid nor incited by agents of a foreign power.

90) Despair. I wish to go back to my cubicle at London Airport.

91) Between Princess Diana and the Governor of Nevada.

92) At the climax of Thus Spake Zarathustra.

93) Seven feet.

94) Three shots.

95) Blood Group 0.

96) I did not wish to spend the rest of eternity in my own company.

97) I was visited in the death cell by the special envoy of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

98) That I had killed the Son of God.

99) He walked with a slight limp. He told me that, as a condemned prisoner, I alone had been spared the sterilising injections, and that the restoration of the national birthrate was now my sole duty.

100) Yes.

The Man Who Walked on the Moon

I, too, was once an astronaut. As you see me sitting here, in this modest caf with its distant glimpse of Copacabana Beach, you probably assume that I am a man of few achievements. The shabby briefcase between my worn heels, the stained suit with its frayed cuffs, the unsavoury hands ready to seize the first offer of a free drink, the whole air of failure. no doubt you think that I am a minor clerk who has missed promotion once too often, and that I amount to nothing, a person of no past and less future.

For many years I believed this myself. I had been abandoned by the authorities, who were glad to see me exiled to another continent, reduced to begging from the American tourists. I suffered from acute amnesia, and certain domestic problems with my wife and my mother. They now share my small apartment at Ipanema, while I am forced to live in a room above the projection booth of the Luxor Cinema, my thoughts drowned by the sound-tracks of science-fiction films.

So many tragic events leave me unsure of myself. Nonetheless, my confidence is returning, and a sense of my true history and worth. Chapters of my life are still hidden from me, and seem as jumbled as the film extracts which the projectionists screen each morning as they focus their cameras. I have still forgotten my years of training, and my mind bars from me any memory of the actual space-flights. But I am certain that I was once an astronaut.

Years ago, before I went into space, I followed many professions — freelance journalist, translator, on one occasion even a war correspondent sent to a small war, which unfortunately was never declared. I was in and out of newspaper offices all day, hoping for that one assignment that would match my talents.

Sadly, all this effort failed to get me to the top, and after ten years I found myself displaced by a younger generation. A certain reticence in my character, a sharpness of manner, set me off from my fellow journalists. Even the editors would laugh at me behind my back. I was given trivial assignments — film reviewing, or writing reports on office-equipment fairs. When the circulation wars began, in a doomed response to the onward sweep of television, the editors openly took exception to my waspish style. I became a part-time translator, and taught for an hour each day at a language school, but my income plummeted. My mother, whom I had supported for many years, was forced to leave her home and join my wife and myself in our apartment at Ipanema.

At first my wife resented this, but soon she and my mother teamed up against me. They became impatient with the hours I spent delaying my unhappy visits to the single newspaper office that still held out hope my journey to work was a transit between one door slammed on my heels and another slammed in my face.

My last friend at the newspaper commiserated with me, as I stood forlornly in the lobby. ‘For heaven’s sake, find a human-interest story! Something tender and affecting, that’s what they want upstairs — life isn’t an avant-garde movie!’