The difference when you have kids comes up when someone wants to meet you out after 9:30 at night. You consider that giant sacrifice. You're like, "Do I do this? Do I stay out until 10:30 and be angry, all of tomorrow?
To start your working life after you've graduated from school and university, it takes you a long time to get started in the real world. Today, kids are not out into the workforce until 27 or 30 years of age. By the time I was 30, I had six kids and 60 trucks.
Sometimes I eat at, like, 9:30 at night and then go to bed at 10:30 and wake up at 4:00.
Kids are a huge sacrifice; they change everything - but I'm ready to work for things of greater importance than going out to meet someone for dinner at 10 o'clock at night.
I can't do the whole going-out-all-night thing. I can't even stay up until 10 P. M., I just fall asleep. My friends know that we have to meet at an earlier time.
After school let out around 2:30, I'd go straight to the gym to be the first person there, even though it didn't open until about 4:30. I was the littlest one and I was good, so they took me serious.
Basically, I am a night owl. My wife is an early bird, so she goes to bed around 9:30, and my kids are in bed about 8. So, if I am home, I will usually start writing about 9:30 and go till about 12:30 or 1:30, depending on what my energy level is.
I'm hopefully in bed and asleep by 10:30. I'm usually yawning by 7:30, 8. You go to the gym and push yourself so you're knocked out by nighttime.
Here's how it goes: I'm up at the stroke of 10 or 10:30. I have breakfast and read the papers, and then it's lunchtime. Then maybe a little nap after lunch and out to the gym, and before I know it, it's time to have a drink.
I wake up at 5:30 in the morning, get to the Pawn Shop at six, work out for two hours, film until seven at night.
I like breakfast sandwiches, and the Krystal Sunriser might be the best breakfast sandwich on Earth. It has a really soft bun and sausage, eggs, and cheese on it. It's great if you're out until 5 or 6 in the morning and you happen to catch the 5:30 first shift. That's what I used to do when I played clubs; I would almost stay out until they opened.
Some bloke came up to me in Tesco a couple of years ago at 11:30 pm and said: 'Excuse me, would you mind telling my son here that you're Uncle Vernon?' I said: 'Get a grip. It's 11:30 at night - what's he doing out of bed? I'm not here to entertain people at this time of night.
One of two things when the guy you're dating isn't really ready to commit. He's an a**hole and he's cheating on you; bottom line he's an immoral dude. Or, he's too young. And the advice I give to everybody night in and night out is: Don't ever take seriously, don't ever consider, don't even pay any attention to what a man says or does until he gets to about 30.
I missed so much of the Swinging Sixties by working. From 1961 to 1969, I got up at 4.30 A.M., a car came for me at 5.30 A.M., and I was taken to our studio at Teddington or Elstree, and we filmed until I got home at 9.30 P.M., five days a week.
I didn't meet my father until he was 30, and he died nine months after that.
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People always say, 'Is it tough getting up at four in the morning?' I'm not terrible with that, but the weird thing for me is that I start to feel like a 3-year-old in need of a nap at about 7:30 at night; and, at 9:30, my head is teetering like that.