With proper acting, I don't know what I would play - I got sent a script for a play, and it said in the notes that my proposed character was 'hideously fat and ugly'. That made my day. I mean, I do know I am no oil painting.

I like reading, I like boring things, and yet I think people for ages had this image of me that I was on the tube with a chainsaw looking for any likely candidate.

Occasionally, some sitcoms still stereotype women - the old dragon or the dolly bird - but on the whole we've moved away from that.

There's something people do to you when they bully you that makes you feel like you're on your own. But don't keep things inside, it's really damaging if you do.

Managers of hospitals, over the years have been increasingly recruited from outside the health service and although their experience of running a supermarket chain might allow them to balance the books, it does not mean they have any insight into how a ward should be managed and patients best served.

Everything becomes magnified at night. Sounds travel in a different way, it's dark, and everything seems far more spooky.

When I was a nurse I never had much money, and I was still happy then.