We live in a society that worships youth. On television, in magazines, in advertisements and on billboards, what sells and what is sold to us is youth.

The world is infinitely more complex than it appeared to me 15 years ago.

I think I was a feminist before the word was invented. By the time I came across feminist books by American or European writers, I realised that there was an articulate way or a language to express all these feelings that I had had for years and years and so I became a raging feminist as a young woman.

I didn't like the nervous tension of being a public person.

Comedy is a very personal thing, as you would know if you've ever told the same joke to two people and had one of them laugh their head off and the other one look at you as though you were a completely cretin.

If Antarctica were music it would be Mozart. Art, and it would be Michelangelo. Literature, and it would be Shakespeare. And yet it is something even greater; the only place on earth that is still as it should be. May we never tame it.

A poll earlier this year showed that 42 per cent of Americans believe we're in the End Times.