My parents were very volatile but very loving. My father would get jealous if my mother looked at somebody. I used to be insanely jealous. It comes out of insecurity. It can come and go, but you get to the point in life where you don't have this raging jealousy and protectiveness about your world.

Every time we moved on, I joined a different class in a different school with different girls until, aged 13, my father had taken the decision to pull me out of school altogether. Everything I needed, he reasoned, could be found within the rich language of Shakespeare's plays at which, by then, I was something of an old hand.

When I was much younger, I sometimes felt rejected by feminists because of an image that I sold because it paid the bills. Any fool could tell my hair is dyed.

When I was little I always thought I was marked out, special, on the verge of something momentous. I used to tingle with anticipation.

I don't take money seriously, so I can't keep any.

I don't think, until you've actually lost somebody you really love, that you can go through that door that allows you to be grown-up.

I hope to start enjoying flirting again when I'm 70, like my mother did.