Overall, it’s good that people are more careful about how they speak about others, but there is a willingness among some people to be offended.”Ĭult hit … Nicholas (right) in 1975’s Tommy. “Having grown up in the 60s, and having that freedom to say what you want, now we’ve regressed a little bit.

I have to be careful, but I still find myself making mistakes, I’m afraid.” Later, he asks me if I “detect an old dinosaur”. With a father like that, says Nicholas, “you could either go the other way and become a priest or you could find yourself expressing yourself with a similar kind of humour at times, which of course is deeply inappropriate. “I reckon my cock has cost me £100,000 per inch.” On being asked to invest in an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical: “Now, I had saved a bit, but not enough that I wanted to blow it on a show about cats.” His inclusion of a Private Eye report on his father, the flamboyant showbiz lawyer Oscar Beuselinck, made me laugh out loud: “Never marry,” warned Oscar, who had divorced three times. But sometimes it’s just his turn of phrase, almost Partridgean at times. It made me laugh, often intentionally – going to dinner in Paris with Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin in the 60s, 24-year-old Nicholas is taken to a restaurant where they serve only flowers and he asks for chips with them.

Over a video call from a low-cost hotel room, he seems fun and lacking in self-importance, as does his book. Pussy galore … Finola Hughes, Paul Nicholas and Sarah Brightman in Cats in 1981.

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