As I was growing up, it was made clear that the fat me wasn't welcome, that a thin person was expected and awaited, and impatiently so.

If you have any power at all from being popular, then you have a duty to help people out.

Despotism isn't nearly as bad as it's cracked up to be.

Sticking to a diet required me to have a permanently low self-esteem. But happily, I developed other skills beyond a fluctuating weight, eventually building up a different source of self-worth.

If, however, you have richer pursuits in mind and know that no woman should be judged by how she looks - that everything she brings to the party is more important than the size of her arse - then refuse to be sucked into the never ending whirligig of self-doubting, self-hating madness that is stop-start dieting and crazy new exercise regimes.

If one's honest about it, spending time in a car with children is pretty ghastly.

I would like it to be a legal requirement for all businesses to be linked to a charity.