I spent my entire childhood living abroad because of my father's occupation, so we were on long-haul flights all the time.

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.

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.

I spent my entire childhood living abroad because of my father's occupation, so we were on long-haul flights all the time.

My dad was a diplomat and after living in America, where I was born, he was posted to Cairo.

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

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.