Since hitting my mid-50s, I've started to bio-degrade more rapidly than I did in my 40's. It catches you a little by surprise how quickly your body says 'oh ffs, will you stop?'. The Xmas period was essentially an all-out cough-a-thon for me, accompanied by acute arthritis and a dodgy ticker in atrial fibulation. So first thing to address was the heart - and even though I'd had a heart operation to fix my arrhythmia before (it failed), we thought we'd give it another go. Here

This week I had a heart procedure in the Harley St Clinic to correct the perpetual atrial fibulation that was occurring under my...