I have had lots of friends who've been affected by Aids and a very good friend of mine, Oscar Moore, died of Aids and I was with him in his last year quite a bit. And of course he was a man living in a very rich culture with a wealthy family who was able to afford health care.

I'm an atheist. I suppose you can call me a sort of libertarian anarchist. I regard religion with fear and suspicion. It's not enough to say that I don't believe in God. I actually regard the system as distressing: I am offended by some of the things said in the Bible and the Qur'an and I refute them.

The flashbacks are parallel for me. You experience two storylines at the same time, and I'm not switching from one time to another.

During an election, it's like they're doing my job: they're going around banging the drum for their party and selling their movie. You know, it's the same thing.

Sometimes I get to put on posh frocks and be Madam Glamour, the vendor of my wares. My lovely friend Kath, a stylist, puts me into things I'd never dream of. But my real life is very different. It's very, very home-based - an intense domestic life, that's the core of everything.

Lindsay Doran goes round the table and introduces everyone - making it clear that I am present in the capacity of writer rather than actress, therefore no one has to be too nice to me.

Difficult for actors to extemporise in nineteenth-century English. Except for Robert Hardy and Elizabeth Spriggs, who speak that way anyway.