The crushing, pitiful, and frequently just plain risible pathos of an unsuccessful actor/performer's life is well charted.

I was accorded the opportunity to learn by failing - albeit at the cost of a few honourable teachers' sanity - and now I realise what a rare and incredible luxury that is.

When not eating, I like shopping; although I'm afraid I've become a bit of a cliche.

The real me now may not be thin but she's got the cake and, if she likes, can eat it too.

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

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.

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