I think everyone can recognize the one-upmanship and the competition that go on wherever you are, especially among groups where the women don't have to hold down office jobs and instead get in a total snit about who won the longest carrot contest or took first prize for summer chutney in the August fete.

Of one thing there is no doubt: if Paris makes demands of the heart, then Munich makes demands of the stomach.

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

If there's anything worse than being 16, it's having parents visibly reliving their own teenage years in your anguished presence.

Being blonde means people decide on sight that you are much prettier and nicer than you really are, just as Americans automatically add 10 points to someone's IQ when they hear an English accent. Fact.

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.

Without my Johnson trademark mop of yellow hair, I think I would be nothing.