'No one should grow old who isn't willing to appear ridiculous,' says John Mortimer in this third part of his highly entertaining autobiography. Playwright, novelist, former barrister and most famously creator of Rumpole of the Bailey, Mortimer nimbly gallops the reader through an action-packed year of his life, despite an ulcerated leg and the inability to put on his own socks.

The year begins in Rome with his friend, the film director Franco Zeffirelli. The action swiftly moves on to the refurbishment of the Royal Court Theatre and the possibility of the proposed leather upholstery giving the ladies in the audience thrush. Before the listener can even think about his solution - 'providing pots of live yogurt with the programme' - he has moved on to fox-hunting and a death threat that he interprets as the greatest form of flattery - after all, someone wants to go to the trouble of killing him.

It is a wonderful and rare gift to be able to pick a subject and speak eloquently and knowledgeably about it. Mortimer may not have the refined, clear voice of a trained reader - a little shaky but terribly saucy (he still has an eye for the ladies at 78) - he can present any opinion and make it acceptable.

He is old and he sounds old, and though he is keen to live out the rest of his life as disgracefully as possible, nobody else would come close to reading so gracefully.