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

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.

I want 'The Lady' magazine to be restored to its traditional place in the pantheon of weekly magazines.

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

People always say theres no such thing as bad publicity, and you always think theyre right, because it seems self-evident: nobodys going to buy a magazine that nobody ever talks about, so people should want to buy a magazine that everybodys talking about.

I do not think that having children - I have three teenagers - keeps you young. The reverse. It thrusts you into a full-frontal confrontation with your own all-too-obvious maturity.

English people are famous for never speaking out but only saying what they really feel about you behind your back. Americans believe the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. I like exploring those, er, differences in national snippiness.