The children break all my jewelry, so everything I wear is cheap - from Topshop or Dorothy Perkins.
Middle-aged women on telly is a bit of a hot topic - before, we were 27 to 37, and now we're 40 to 50. You do notice as you get older... you go past 35, and suddenly you're playing baddies.
When I write, I create really absurd situations which become false because I am after the joke.
When I'm depressed, I definitely comfort eat, but I also eat when I'm happy. The only time I don't eat is if I am terribly nervous.
As a writer myself, my job has very often been to also write on the job. So you get the script and a vague idea of how the scene might work, and you then add funny words or change the script. I'm not the world's best writer or the world's best actor, but I can do that thing where I can fix - or ruin - fix-slash-ruin, add quirk, add value.
I've got spider veins all over my legs, so I wear opaque tights all winter. All sorts of colours.
I don't get star-struck at all.
My first film crush was Mark Lester as Oliver Twist in the Carol Reed film.
A lot of things in 'Parents' I find very truthful.
I dont have the self-discipline for diets; I break rules I set for myself, so I try and eat more healthily, juice more, and avoid sugar.
Once you have a Down's syndrome child, you can't conform. In a way, you're free.
If you get 10,000 guys to put their ideal woman into a computer, it still comes out looking like Angelina Jolie.
When I'm a brunette, it's four times harder to hail a taxi. Then I go blonde again, and suddenly there are taxis everywhere.
Getting a new passport took me a stupid amount of time. I had to go back five times with different photographs because they kept saying I was smiling, which is against the rules. I was not smiling.
When I got pregnant with my first child I gained nearly 5st. I did a bit of pretending: "I'm just really small, so I just put on a lot of weight when I'm pregnant." That is true, but I also ate a lot of cake.
A Local Government Stationery Store is something to behold. It's like walking through the back of a cupboard into a really dull Narnia.
I have three boys, so I live in a household full of testosterone.
I once had a friend who did the hair for sci-fi movies, and after a particularly bad break-up I stupidly went to her salon and told her she could do anything she liked. She dyed the bottom cherry red and the top peroxide blonde.
I'm very devoted to my kids - I'm completely blind to their faults.
I never ever Google myself. That way madness lies.
All I want to do really is get married and be a matriarch.
Comedians have to write to survive because you don't get cast for your beauty.
TV feels quite constipated, and the thing I find particularly difficult is the branding of the channels where it's not 'Is it a good script?' but 'Is it a BBC2 script?'
