You feel you can pretend to be young until you're 50, but after that, what happens and how do you approach it?

I started writing sketches with Dennis Kelly, who I ended up writing 'Pulling' with. We entered a BBC competition and did quite well, then started writing bits for other people's shows. You wheedle your way in, write pilots and eventually you end up writing a sitcom.

Stresses in a marriage and in family life, sometimes they're prompted by whatever is going on in the wider world as well as what's going on behind your door.

Comedians... they're different from actors. There's more ego there. They create the whole thing, I guess, so they're more precious.

Comedy and drama are less ageist media for women than stuff like light entertainment. But in TV or film, women have to be more pleasing on the eye than men.

Spending way too long worrying about what people think about me is a bad habit.

It kind of depresses me when people decide to move away. I get it, you want your kids to have somewhere to roam free or to recreate whatever your sort of childhood ideal was, but my kids are grand. I love LA because lifestyle wise, it's near the beach and mountains and it is great for kids but then it's a city built on an industry that, at the end of the day, is kind of facile.