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.

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.

I think a lot of women are incredibly tough and they're just really admirable. Especially the way that, given what they've got, they just manage to carry on.

School was great. There were no boys there, which didn't really bother me at the time because I had two brothers, so I was quite pleased not to spend any more time with boys.

I read that book Fat is a Feminist issue, got a bit desperate halfway through and ate it.

I like men. They are hugely entertaining, but they have a lot of shortcomings and you just have to bear those in mind.

My mum always felt that women deserved as much as men, and should have as much power, so I suppose I opted to go into a very male-dominated arena to try and prove that.