Risks and helping hands in the race against time

No matter what the play-safers may say, you have to experiment sometimes. You have to say 'yes' against your better judgement and see how things turn out. It's hard to imagine a life without risk, although, as an older, wiser (and indeed richer) friend recently pointed out, you don't need to embrace it every day.

Many years ago I was sitting in traffic, proper London traffic, on the Westway. We were just past Paddington, heading east.

"It's the longest stretch of raised motorway in the world, you know," I murmured. My friend Tony Grafton was due at a wedding in sunny Donny, as Wogan used to say, at 2pm. It was about 10.30am, the train due out of King's Cross at 11. There was a tube strike and, when he rang me, worry was giving panic a fair run for its money. Normally I'd have quoted odds but, even if 100-8 had meant anything to him, it wouldn't have helped.