As a comic and as a nurse, it's important to look calm on the surface when you're absolutely crapping yourself inside. So, if someone is waving a machete at you, which has happened to me when I was a nurse, it's important to make that person feel that you're in control.

When I got married, the Sun ran the headline: "Here comes the bride, all fat and wide." Luckily, it was a few days after the wedding - but it was still hideous to read at a great romantic moment.

And I also felt that no one in an audience could abuse me worse than the sort of abuse I had had at work as a psychiatric nurse.

There's still this underlying image of women that they should fulfil a certain role. It's no accident that a lot of men who are a bit misogynistic tend to say things like 'get back to the kitchen' or 'why aren't you at home looking after the kids'.

I think there's a danger that we're moving towards a state where the people we are expected to admire are almost not human anymore, and I don't like that. I prefer it when someone looks like a nice person, and you think, 'I could have a laugh with them in the pub.'

I think it's difficult, if you're a quite private person like I am, to write about your life very intimately.

Privatisation splits hospital services into increasingly small packages.