After playing Saffy in 'Ab Fab', I needed to take time out from acting to see if I really wanted to do it. I had been doing it for a very long time and I was being sent the same sort of scripts again and again.

I am extremely content in my life - sometimes to the point where I really should find something to moan about!

I love to travel with my family or my two best friends because I completely trust them. I forced my two best friends into learning to scuba dive with me in Sri Lanka - it was amazing but also hideous because we were learning in very difficult seas.

Being a mum is something that's never bothered me too much. I have never felt a strong need to have children, but I am not averse to it either.

I just love doing costume dramas; I am very lucky, as I see myself as a part-time time traveller.

I don't get inoculations or take anti-malaria tablets when I go abroad, I take the homeopathic alternative, called 'nosodes', and I'm the only one who never goes down with anything.

It's very hard to dramatise something factual and not make it look overdone, but also not to make it look so under-dramatised that it's dull.