I wish my parents hadn't made me feel that how I looked was linked to how much they loved me. But I do also see how hard it must be to see your child pile on the pounds and trust they'll find their own way back to a healthy weight.

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

Why has everything got to be about feelings these days? In the old days, no one knew what anyone was feeling and, what's more, they weren't expected to.

My mother, father, stepmother and surrogate mother have all died of cancer; my best friend has got terminal cancer and at least five of my other friends have had cancer but survived it.

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

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

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.