I tried to eat better too, but when you're on tour you literally just eat some hideous pork pie on the motorway on the way to a show. It's a really unhealthy lifestyle: you're up late, drinking loads of coffee to stay awake, drinking loads of alcohol because you're socialising with people.

I like to read my diary occasionally to remind myself what a miserable, alienated old sod I used to be.

Suffice to say, many women find their first appearance on a comedy panel show to be their last. Second chances seem to be given less often to the female of the species.

Who do I like? I am a big fan of French and Saunders - not that that they are particularly stand-up I have to say, but I think they have been great for women and they are of themselves just incredibly funny whether they are male or female.

My mum is bright, ambitious, well read, political and very bolshie: when my dad was conscripted into the Army and posted to Libya, she convinced some general to let her go with him. I don't know how she managed it.

I never think, 'Where am I going to be in a year's time?' That seems to be a sure way of missing the fact that you might be quite happy now.

I have big friends who won't go swimming because they're too embarrassed about it. I feel that's such a shame, because actually people should be encouraging fat people who are exercising to do it, not pointing and laughing.