But sometimes you have to be brave. Sometimes you have to show people what's important in life.

Being a journalist is good if you want to write books: it teaches you to get beyond the blank screen. My books have been described as froth but there's scope to be witty and ironic about everything in life.

I'm allergic to family occasions. Sometimes I think we'd do better as dandelion seeds-no family, no history, just floating off into the world, each on our own piece of fluff.

You're so narrow-minded! You live in the same village you grew up in, you run the family business, you're buying a nursery down the road... you're practically still in the womb. So before you lecture me on the way to live my life, try living one of your own, OK?

I can't cook. I don't have the right brain for it, somehow. I can't walk into a room and tidy it up. I get distracted. I pick up one thing and I start looking at it. And my cooking is truly heinous.

I've never written a children's book, but when people meet me for the first time and I say I write books, they invariably reply, 'Children's books?' Maybe it's something about my face.

Wow. I've never been a VIP before. I've never even been a IP.