I've never trained as an actor. I've always thought I'm not a good actor. I've been told I'm not a good actor by a lot of people.
My mum is bright, ambitious, well read, political and very bolshie: when my dad was conscripted into the Army and posted to Libya, she convinced some general to let her go with him. I don't know how she managed it.
Anybody who has had the pleasure of reading an article about themselves in the press, knows that on the whole, there is a huge amount of inaccuracy, value judgment and the use of a crowbar to insert editorial bias that reflects the current political leaning of that particular paper.
If I am totally honest, I would have to say that ''Allo 'Allo!' was not my cup of tea, even though lots of people loved it. For that reason, I find comedy fascinating. There is a huge difference between what people find funny.
I've always been criticised for how filthy my material is. Victoria Wood said to me once, 'I wish I was a bit ruder, like you,' and I said, 'Well, I wish I was a bit cleaner, like you.'
I'm just trying to spread the word and upturn the myth that actually you should be resting after cancer treatment. You shouldn't; you should be getting out and doing any kind of exercise you can. You don't have to run a marathon, but you just have to up your activity levels.
Television provokes strong opinions, and sometimes we try a bit too hard to appeal to everyone.
Anything is good if it's made of chocolate.
I believe that if your brain has to get to grips with complicated words, then you won't get Alzheimer's. I'm sure it's not true, but I do believe it.
I love doing stand-up. It's so self-contained - you go there, you do it, you go home - but with telly, there are too many people involved with it with opinions. You have a product, and everyone wants to change it.
Punk allowed women to stop looking feminine. Oh, the relief.
To me, a politician's job is to listen to constituents' problems and try to sort them out.
Occasionally, some sitcoms still stereotype women - the old dragon or the dolly bird - but on the whole we've moved away from that.
I think people tend to believe that women who are successful are probably neglecting their children, possibly a bit hard-nosed and that they don't really support other women very much - that they're men-haters and ball-breakers. I've certainly been on the receiving end of those 'compliments' for most of my career.
My mum and my husband are from Irish backgrounds so we have a lot of potatoes. Chips, mashed, boiled, new potatoes, I love them all. Even the slightly wanky ones like Duchess potatoes that go up in a little spiral.
I think it's really important to be kind, especially to people whose lives are grim - I try hard to cheer people up in as many ways as I can - if all else fails - I tell 'em a joke!
There's still this underlying image of women that they should fulfil a certain role. It's no accident that a lot of men who are a bit misogynistic tend to say things like 'get back to the kitchen' or 'why aren't you at home looking after the kids'.
I like to read my diary occasionally to remind myself what a miserable, alienated old sod I used to be.
A good culture in a hospital can absorb and manage a few bad nurses, but once the culture becomes bad in itself, bad nursing practice is much harder to hide.
Wild men are so enormously attractive.
When I was a nurse I never had much money, and I was still happy then.
I like the purity of stand-up because it is all about whether people laugh at your jokes. Either they laugh or they don't.
I've seen a lot of women give up after they've had three or four bad gigs in a row. It's very difficult to learn not to take nasty heckles personally.
When you get to know someone, you find there's something nasty in their woodshed.
I used to get a lot of people saying 'Oh, you are such a lucky granny.' But the fact of the matter is you can be a grandma at 35 these days.
