Gyles Brandreth: It's new year, what better time to keep a diary?

It’s January - a new year - and for many that is all the impetus required to start a diary. After the year we’ve just had there is a sense that we are living through an era that will leave its mark on history. It is well worth recording your hopes, fears and observations. So get writing that diary.
One particularly keen diarist is our good friend Gyles Brandreth who has been cataloging the  trajectory of his life and committing his daily thoughts to paper (though possibly he does it electronically these days) since 1959.
Urging others to do the same, the writer, actor, wit and magnificent name-dropper cautions against holding back. He quotes inveterate diarist Sir Henry ‘Chips’ Channon who once remarked: ‘What is more dull than a discreet diary?  One might as well have a discreet soul.’
He also reveals the great, late Tony Benn who, like Gyles himself was a regular contributor to Clive Conway Productions, once told him that keeping a diary enabled him to experience everything three times “Once as it happened; again, when he wrote it up; and once more when he re-read it.”
So what  are you waiting for? Start keeping a diary. Whether the result is a collection of notes on your life, a journal of our times or a serious memoir, it’ll be worth it. If nothing else it will help you to order your thoughts and hone your writing skills.