Middle-aged women on telly is a bit of a hot topic - before, we were 27 to 37, and now we're 40 to 50. You do notice as you get older... you go past 35, and suddenly you're playing baddies.

When I'm a brunette, it's four times harder to hail a taxi. Then I go blonde again, and suddenly there are taxis everywhere.

I think everyone is forgetting what plastic surgery is for - if you have a face-eating tumour, lose a breast or are involved in a car accident, then it's a good idea.

I can make a virtue of slapdash. Slapdash can give you courage.

I have a lot of funny friends, though not everyone's funny all the time. Doon Mackichan's my funniest friend in the pub; Nina Conti's the funniest with a monkey.

As a writer myself, my job has very often been to also write on the job. So you get the script and a vague idea of how the scene might work, and you then add funny words or change the script. I'm not the world's best writer or the world's best actor, but I can do that thing where I can fix - or ruin - fix-slash-ruin, add quirk, add value.

I always carry a pair of scissors around with me to cut things out of magazines.