
Punk allowed women to stop looking feminine. Oh, the relief.

I never think, 'Where am I going to be in a year's time?' That seems to be a sure way of missing the fact that you might be quite happy now.

Jeremy Clarkson is rather charming, but I can't stomach his public persona. I don't like his casual racism and casual misogyny.

A lot of people do that kind of nostalgia stuff believing that they were very happy in their teenage years, but that's probably just an illusion.

I was always being called upon to be an honorary boy alongside my brothers. I don't think I'd be a comic now if it hadn't been for that.

I buy smoked mackerel in a vain attempt at being healthy. I do actually really like it, and you don't have to cook it, which is handy.

Being Christian towards poor people means trying to improve their lives and give them back some self-respect.

I think there's a far more general audience now because I've done more populist stuff on telly.

No one I know is actually so rude as to tell me I've become duller since having children. But I'm sure they think it.

Having children is fab. They keep me young and make me get up in the morning.

Once you get labelled, people expect you to behave within the very narrow confines of that label.

I never ever take into consideration the consequences of my actions until it's too late.

I'm not really a churchy person, although I do think Jesus was a good bloke.

What could be funnier than a fat person trying to run a marathon?

I have such admiration for single mothers. I simply don't comprehend how you'd cope with that intensity, the lack of breaks, ever, on your own.

To me, a politician's job is to listen to constituents' problems and try to sort them out.

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.

I look like Julian Clary on steroids.

I went on the pill when I was 16, put on four stone ... so that proved to be a very effective contraceptive.

When you get to know someone, you find there's something nasty in their woodshed.

The funny thing is, I don't actually think of myself as fat at all. I don't think I am. Not really.

When I was a nurse my favourite assignment was the anorexic ward. I sometimes ate as many as seventeen dinners

It wasn't a conscious effort to have kids later. It was just the way life goes.

When I was a nurse I never had much money, and I was still happy then.

My dad's a very sensitive man, but as the archetypal rebellious teenager, I didn't realise that.

When I was at school you got an overall general education on many things, even just basic facts.

Everything becomes magnified at night. Sounds travel in a different way, it's dark, and everything seems far more spooky.

Let's face it: I am not a professional runner.

I just don't like travelling very much.

British ferries have stopped transporting live animals to the Continent. This has made it very difficult for England fans to get to Away matches.

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.

When you have children, your house smells very unpleasant all the time.

There's lots of different feminist groups. It's not as straightforward as just looking like a plumber.

I used to get nervous about three weeks before a gig ... now I've managed to condense it down to a manageable ten minutes.

Inside every fat person there's a thin person looking to get out - They've just eaten them

You know it's time for a New Year's resolution to lose weight when you step on a talking scale and it says, One at a time, please.

I like men. They are hugely entertaining, but they have a lot of shortcomings and you just have to bear those in mind.

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.

It's got too much hard work slapping them and telling them to shut up.

I've always liked to think I could do anything I wished as well as - if not better than - a man. But I wasn't very good at rally driving.

Wild men are so enormously attractive.

I think the key attributes for a good speaker are someone that's articulate and someone that puts a fair amount of humour into what they do.

I thought I was funny as a kid.

I'm sure some cynical people would point to that as the main reason for doing it for a lot of people.

I cannot abide anyone treating another human being like a piece of dirt, whatever the context.

It's very difficult to learn not to take nasty heckles personally.

I did try when I wasn't doing the singing to do as much comedy as I could because I thought with Comic Relief you are duty bound to anyway.

And I also felt that no one in an audience could abuse me worse than the sort of abuse I had had at work as a psychiatric nurse.

I'm too nervous to eat before I go onstage, and I'll usually eat out after the performance or when I get home at midnight.

How do you conduct an intimate relationship where no one ever loses it? Where no one ever lashes out, where no one ever smacks anyone in the mouth?

I'm a Luddite with computers, and I'm slightly worried about being hacked as well.

With two small children, I haven't had a wash since 2001 so the chance to go shopping is way down the list. It is something I do intend to get.

There are lots of people who believe that caricature of me the tabloids created, so they think they don't like me.

I'm a real Kentish maid, you know.

I have friends who vote Tory, and I'm appalled, but that's not to say they're not great people in so many other ways.

Men are fantastic - as a concept.

Does anyone really go into nursing intending to be apathetic, cold and removed from suffering? I find that very difficult to believe.

I read that book 'Fat is a Feminist Issue', got a bit desperate halfway through and ate it.

I think it's difficult, if you're a quite private person like I am, to write about your life very intimately.

There are 10-20 times more male comics than female comics; it's something to do with the social structure of society.

Fat people are brilliant in bed. If I'm sitting on top of you, who's going to argue?

Anything is good if it's made of chocolate.

I like to read my diary occasionally to remind myself what a miserable, alienated old sod I used to be.

I am a hip-hop artist, as you probably know. My hip-hop name is Big Smalls.

I like to shock people.

People are so different in reality from the picture created of them on TV. So it's all a creation; everything is made up.

In the end, punk inevitably burned itself out and acted as a bridge across which the New Romantics could sashay in their chiffon and glossy hair.

Even when I wasn't overweight I was never one of those girls or women who wanted to look nice. I always thought it wasn't important.

Birthdays are nature's way of telling you to eat more cake.

Each generation has a backlash against the generation before.