‘Don’t panic if you aren’t as funny as Jeremy Hardy,” said the producer the first time I went on Radio 4’s The News Quiz, “because nobody is.” He’d meant it to be encouraging, but I was terrified. If? Why “if”? This was considered a possibility? A hope? What the hell was I doing here? Then, 20 minutes in, during a bit about being nearly killed by a giraffe, I made a joke and Jeremy guffawed and I forgot all about the live audience, or indeed the listeners. If I can make Jeremy Hardy laugh, I thought to myself, then maybe this isn’t going to be too bad.

That was in 2008 and Jeremy died last Friday. He was only 57, and it was cancer,