Which moment embarrassed you most?

I once did a record store signing in LA, which I had no business doing. No one was there – just staff. They were getting ready to close the shop and sweeping up.

Farting in front of Colin Firth.

I recently had a dramatic fall on stage in Hungary. It was a massive stage – I was miles away from the audience – and I didn’t expect there to be two monitors in the middle of it. I went completely arse over tit and landed on my chin. First, I felt shock, pain, embarrassment, and then I felt lucky that I didn’t break any teeth or bite through my tongue. I asked for an ice pack for my chin, got up and finished the set.

I remember being a teenager and writing this romantic short story in the style of the Brontës on a computer and I didn’t realise that the person whose computer it was could just print it out. A group of boys had a couple of pages and they were all reading it.

Also my most triumphant: 2017 at the Royal Court. Julie Hesmondhalgh reads my psychologist’s report over two hours. Every excruciating intimate word of it. Extreme verbatim theatre. One night only.

The idiocy of going to Skye from New Zealand in April 2020. All of a sudden, I’m turning on the news and hearing myself as an item. I have never been more mortified.

Recently, sending a negative text about a person to that person.

Forty-eight hours after giving birth, I sent a picture that someone had sent me of their baby to a WhatsApp group, thinking it was my son (they kind of looked similar). Mortifying.

Shitting myself in New York last November. I was wearing cream trousers. We were going to see my son Matty and his band, the 1975, at Madison Square Garden, and I was walking through the streets, enjoying the sunshine, pretending I was in some kind of video – throwing my hat into the New York sky like Mary Tyler Moore. I saw a couple of people turn and look at me. Now, although I’m not famous in New York, whenever Matty’s there I do get recognised as his mum, so I’m smiling and waving at them. I went back to the hotel room and bent over to get something out of the suitcase, and my husband said: “Do you realise you’ve shat yourself?”

The very first day that I was filming Top Gear, for which I was so unqualified because I’d only ever driven a Fiat Uno. I got into a DB7 Vantage Volante outside the Aston Martin factory, put my foot on the accelerator and bunny-hopped across the gravel because I’d forgotten to take the handbrake off.

I once walked up to Harriet Walter while she was having lunch on her own because I thought I knew her, and then when I got up to the table I realised I didn’t know her, I just recognised her because she was Harriet Walter.

I don’t get embarrassed.

When I was 17, my friends and I threw a fashion show for a breast cancer charity. Breast cancer is something my mum went through when I was 14, so prevention is very close to my heart. Our singer, who was performing during the fashion show, dropped out at the last minute so I had to step in. It’s on video, and my sister always brings it up.

At the TV Baftas last year I was wearing these heels that had stiff bows on the front. One heel locked into the other bow and I went arse over tit.

I was doing The Seagull with Carey Mulligan and Kristin Scott Thomas on Broadway. I walked out on stage and looked at Carey and said: “I’ve no idea what to say.” It was pretty deep into the run and it took me by surprise.

I am in a public profession, so take your pick. It’s all embarrassing.

I once asked a young woman if she had ever heard of the musician Laura Marling, insinuating I knew Laura Marling, to which she replied: “I am Laura Marling.”

Wearing 90s ripped-at-the-crotch jeans at Rada during an unarmed combat session and showing everyone more than they bargained for.

Going on stage and saying, “Good evening Lyon!” I was in Marseille.

I have a deep-rooted fear of being in trouble. I once tried to sneak into the back of a photography exhibition with my husband when one of our kids was in a pushchair. We’d arrived late and he suggested we go in through the gift shop and see the last room. As we poked our heads round the door, the security guard noticed us. I shouted, “That man’s trying to get in!”, then ran away.