The Lady' is a piddling little magazine that no one cares about or buys.

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 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 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.

Don't worry about never having time to write. Just write what you can in the time you do have and give yourself a big clap on the back, followed by a double latte and a blueberry muffin.

I went freelance in 1996 and my children are now teenagers and it seemed right.

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.