It's very hard to self-motivate without someone standing over you snarling, ready to hurl the chalk at your head at the slightest slackening.

Being boring is just wrong, isn't it? You wouldn't have got anywhere being boring.

I'm worried about looking like a bad person when, in fact, I try to be a good person. I don't like the public image that I've been dressed with and it worries me.

The reason we all need a mutton alert, which needs constant testing, like smoke alarms, is because there is really no such thing as age-appropriate dressing any longer, as I know because my wardrobe is interchangeable with my daughter's.

When I'm called unkind... that really cuts to the quick. You can say anything else that you like about me.

I talk to bankers, distributors, marketing people. I used to sit at home in my tracksuit bottoms, and the real excitement of my day would be going out to get a copy of Private Eye and a latte.

I love writing journalism because it's all over in two hours and comes straight off the top of the head. Writing novels is soooooo much harder. It's the hardest thing I've ever done.