I would not let Nick Cassavetes direct My Sister’s Keeper, the film. He said [the ending] was going to match what was in the book, then changed it.

That Sparks predates the Beatles and it’s kind of all too obvious where they got a lot of their inspiration.

When I thought maybe I've just got a few weeks, I thought God this is what they mean by the reckoning. I've got to sort all this stuff out in days. Is it possible to sort out all those things in your past that you'd prefer not to have done? ... But actually by going through the process we've gone through, I think we have. And it's a real blessing to have this time do that.

I am a living self-help book – I’ve managed to train myself to never regret anything.

Alan Bates, Lord Arbuthnot and Nick Wallis for exposing the Post Office and Fujitsu and, let’s hope, for ensuring everyone is properly compensated.

Like intoxication, sometimes followed by a hangover.

Young, beautiful, deluded.

A teacher and a nightclub singer.

When I started as a researcher in the BBC, I was working for an editor who was a self-confessed misogynist. He used to practise shooting by aiming his air gun at an aerosol can balanced just over my head. I made it a matter of pride not to flinch as the pellets whizzed by.

My hybrid car. Not glamorous, not fast, but indispensable.