I have a voice in the University, I'm in the House of Lords, I have this lovely permanent home. Everything's hunky-dory. I just need a bit of help.

'I wanted to write the final chapter about Jim Hacker and Sir Humphrey Appleby, now in their eighties, discarded, ignored, watching today's world with utter bewilderment. An elegiac play about old age and loss - loss of power, loss of influence, loss of friends, loss of family. The only play I've seen on this theme is King Lear. This will be funnier.'

The hit BBC television series by Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, Yes, Minister, and Yes, Prime Minister, captured the political consciousness of the nation in the 1980s. Lynn's stage play I'm Sorry, Prime Minister, I Can't Quite Remember . . ., set in a contemporary Hacker College, Oxford, opened at the Barn Theatre, Cirencester, in September 2023.