I never met David Kelly, but I knew from what he told other people that this was not his view. The BBC were saying that Tony Blair was making up lies so that he could send young men and women to war, maybe to die. I think that if the BBC had done their jobs professionally, they'd have realised that you couldn't justify what they said. And nothing has emerged since to justify that report.

Friends have suggested that I am the least qualified person to talk about happiness, because I am often down, and sometimes profoundly depressed. But I think that's where my qualification comes from. Because to know happiness, it helps to know unhappiness.

My aunty says I'm the double of my father. He was a workaholic, which I've definitely inherited. And like me, he could be the life and soul of the party, but also quite withdrawn.

There is something in me that makes me see things through.

The media are obsessed with spin doctors and with portraying them as a bad thing, yet seem addicted to our medicine.

The royal family's existence is a constant reminder of the hollowness of John Major's rhetoric, and idiotic statements by its leading members a constant boost to the republican cause. They're fine opening hospitals. It's when they open their mouths they get into trouble.

I want to write more books, see my first novel made into a film, fight more campaigns, work in more countries. I want to be able to recall experiences that have endured for their pleasure and range and intensity.