Although a ‘burgh boy now, I was born in Windsor, and whenever I am in London I pop out to the old town, sit down with a coffee and reminisce about how my life has played out since I came into the world.

To get there you generally have to take the train from London and change at Slough, a town that is oft maligned. Oddly it is quite close to my heart.

When I was a little boy my mother, for similar reasons of nostalgia, would take me out there for the day and we would wait at Slough station to change onto the Windsor train. I recall expresses hurtling noisily through at what seemed, to my childish mind, the speed of light.

On a recent visit to Slough I was very surprised to see huge barriers erected on the platforms where the fast trains pass through. The station is now also adorned with posters advertising the services of mental health charities, urging people at the end of their tether to get in touch.

It seems that I’m not the only one to have noticed the speed of the through express trains, and the station at Slough got the unwanted title of being a suicide hot spot.

In the cold, stark light of day, it is heartbreakingly sad that a place which to me was all about the beginning of life is now irrevocably connected with tragic, ghastly death.

While I was in London, the report into the Grenfell tragedy was published.

The desperate events of that day only reinforced to me that it always seems to be those with the least, who have the most to lose.

I can remember watching the horror unfold on live television that morning, the flames licking up what we now know to have been inflammable cladding, while people were trapped inside after being told to stay put.

Seventy-two people died in the Grenfell Tower fire.Seventy-two people died in the Grenfell Tower fire.

They later suffered the added ignominy of being criticised by Jacob Rees-Mogg, who trampled all over them and their loss with his size nines by saying they should have had the common sense to leave the building, despite being instructed not to.

And if you ever had any desire to enter public life and had a fancy to be involved in anything lucrative, powerful and high profile, be reminded that it is a vicious, shark-infested ocean.

Cast your minds back to that dreadful time and remember this: the only person who lost their job because of Grenfell was not a government minister, a building engineer or a planning official, but a firefighter - somebody whose colleagues risk life and limb day in and day out to keep us safe.

Dany Cotton, head of the London Fire Brigade, made no mistake other than to be still standing, far from any chairs, when the music stopped. That she took the fall for others’ ghastly mistakes is a tragedy and tells you all you need to know about politicians.

But what sticks in my memory most of all is the tale of one survivor who bemoaned the fact that the cladding had been installed in the first place.

It wasn’t to improve the tower block, he said, because Grenfell residents couldn’t see it from their windows. Instead it was to make the shabby exterior nicer for people who had to look at it from their expensive houses nearby.