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.

In Germany, salads are assemblies of ham and mayonnaise, not trendy tossed leaves.

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

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.

Of course I'm naughty. I've always had to compete for attention, you see.

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.

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.