In the early days of Panorama, its host, Richard Dimbleby, described himself without shame as "the perennial layman".
Jerome Willis, who has died at the age of 85, was an actor who might have described himself, without bitterness, as an "attendant lord".
A couple of years earlier, Luan Plakici, an Albanian "immigration expert", as he described himself without irony, was jailed for 23 years.
Certainly, he has none of the bad habits that often afflict singers in his position and has described himself, without apology, as having a "businesslike" approach to his work.
Rootless since leaving his Kansas home at 13, long divorced and estranged from his three children, Red lives in a trailer and describes himself without shame as a "bum," but a happy one.
But he is also the leader of the Communist Revolutionary League, and in a long interview here, in party offices above a printing factory in this racially mixed city just east of Paris — where cheap clothing stores abut shops selling North African and Middle Eastern spices and take-out food — he describes himself without blushing as a revolutionary.
During his youth in Kentucky, where he grew up as the son of a newscaster and a former model, Mr. Clooney described himself as "without much focus and drive".
Martello describes himself as without politics: if he is evangelical about anything it is music.
He twice cited the election of Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana as the House majority whip, noting Scalise's reported comments describing himself "David Duke without the baggage," a comparison to the former Ku Klux Klansman and white supremacist.
This is a man who describes himself — regularly and without irony — as a Christopher Columbus of finance.
