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

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?

I'm the co-chair of the PTA at my kids' school, Ashmount Primary, in north Islington, London.

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

With a diplomat father, for whom foreign postings were a fact of life, my siblings and I were expected to attend boarding schools in Britain.

I cry at everything, even the length of the queue at Sainsbury's.

Call me an over anxious, middle-class mum, but my eight-and-a-half-year old son looks very much, to me, like he's headed for a life of crime.