You can take the boy out of advertising, but you can’t take the copywriter out of the middle-aged man. I was standing on a street corner in London when I discovered this. I had just been told by a Harley Street specialist that the biopsy of what my GP had taken for a harmless bump in my throat had shown it to be a very aggressive cancer, and that even with the vigorous treatment the specialist was now urging, my chances of seeing the year out were not great.