When you lie in bed at night watching roaches climb your wall, if you called your dad he could stop it all

I was just walking home from Eccles in the twilight of the setting sun, when it hit me with a sickening impact that by going to Art School, I'd sort of become McMurphy in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest". Almost everybody I knew seemed to be like me, similar intelligence, similar inclinations, living in crappy shared flats or at their parents. Then as I got to know them I'd find out "oh, my dad owns one of the biggest haulage companies in Britain", "My family owns Boddington's brewers", "my family are millionaires, we own the biggest canning plant in Hong Kong", "My father is National Head of Security for ...", "We own ... a large Ironware and Fittings company".

They could afford to arse about, and could afford to fail, my friend John and I couldn't.

It was like the moment in "Cuckoo's Nest" when McMurphy realises that the rest of the inmates of the Nuthouse are voluntary in-patients, but he's stuck in there for real, and he isn't getting out.

It's 30 years later but it made me feel sick to my stomach.