If I'm hunting down gifts, I like to buy locally.

When popularity is your only goal, doing well in class is going to feature very low, if at all, on your priority list.

My parents both had Oxford degrees, they read important books, spoke foreign languages, drank real coffee and went to museums for pleasure. People like that don't have fat kids: they were cut out to be winners and winners don't have children who are overweight.

As an actress and comedienne, I'm a huge fan of he theatre and the Tricycle in Kilburn is my favourite in London. I dragged my kids to a performance of 'Twelfth Night' there, where they handed out pizza. Who knew that all it takes to get children interested in Shakespeare is a snack?

There is an inherent tolerance and kindness in the state school teenagers I know.

Does everyone turn into a truculent thirteen-year-old when they go home, or is it just me?

My parents' generation's benchmark was simple: Fat Equals Bad.