Brighton is such a good place to bring up kids.
Age is just a number and beauty is within.
I do think, of course, that women and men should be paid the same.
It’s really important that we look after our libraries.
I use this little trick where I take my arms up above my head, breathe in really slowly, and repeat. I do it before every show, TV or radio, and people always laugh at me. But it really helps.
I’ve always felt all the jobs I’ve ever got are on merit.
When you get older and have kids your body changes, and you try to accept it.
I didn’t see my mum Julia for a few years – she was very young when she married my dad and had me, and when they parted I lived with my dad and my other ‘mum,’ his wife Diane.
I was one of those kids who ate everyone’s school dinners. They used to call me ‘Pig of The Year.’
A lot of men I have spoken to have said it’s very confusing being a modern man. You want to be sensitive but also strong. You can’t win. It’s really hard trying to be both.
I’ve ridden shopping bikes. My dad held my saddle and pushed me along when I was five. I’ve had a go on a BMX.
Whatever has gone on in the week, ‘Gardeners’ World’ marks the end of it.
I’m a terrible late-night snacker.
I’ve seen friends get together with someone who’s not single, and thought, ‘God, don’t’ – but then it has worked out. Equally, I’ve seen friends go through terrible times, but still manage to stay together.
As for Lady GaGa, she’s just a copy of Madonna.
Nincompoop is such a brilliantly satisfying word.
It’s so hard to sit and watch someone you love and care for struggle with mental health.
It’s bloody tough, bloody painful, trying to get sober on your own.
There is such a thing as too much fun.
Love just keeps on coming.
You give a little love and it all comes back to you.
To me, ‘Transparent’ is one of the best family dramas since ‘The Sopranos.’
I pride myself on buying really good presents.
I wished they did more things like ‘How’ and ‘Tomorrow’s World.’ Programmes about how things work.
I think it’s so isolating to be trapped in your mind like that, when you doubt yourself, you doubt everything you’ve ever known. You doubt your family love you. You doubt your friends care for you.
The second time I was pregnant friends would give me rubber bands to gnaw, because the first time, I had chewed things like a rubber bit that fell off the dishwasher. I remember driving once in the rain and the smell of my rubber-soled shoes in the damp caused me to pull over and start chomping on the rubber mat.
My family love Khruangbin’s faraway soundscapes.
I have a really large family, so we have three big Christmas celebrations. This involves intense diary planning, compromising between the families – and serious food shopping.
Great gifts include warm pyjamas, bedsocks, scarves and blankets.
My love for the Bee Gees and their disco vibes is huge.
I always eat after a show and I love a big fry-up.
I’ve listened to Terry Wogan since I was a girl; my parents listened to David Jacobs and Desmond Carrington.
I ate 18 spam fritters in one sitting at Farnham Common junior school in some sort of popularity contest.
Mental health resources are under huge pressure and there are a lot of people who are not necessarily getting the support they need in time.
I think something that’s really important to share, having spoken now to lots of people who work within mental health support networks or people trying to make a difference, is that there is hope. There is help available.
My twenties were amazing. My thirties were all highs and lows.
I went to Manchester, didn’t know anyone, got a job as a runner and worked my butt off. I got paid 60 quid a week, and lived above a pub.
I was a really camp child! In the 70s, an age of all these amazing musical subcultures, I was sitting in my living room singing to my dad’s Streisand records.
I remember Will Smith and me seeing who had the most sticky-out ears.
When I moved to Manchester, to work as a runner for Granada, I shared with a researcher called Vicky who took pity on my inability to cook and made me meals for three years. Put in charge of cookery on a live kids’ show I’d buy cookies from a shop to show as ‘ones we made earlier.’
Laura Marling is Joni Mitchell-level for me.
There is no greater joy than watching your children grow, learn and laugh.
Love fills your heart and breaks your heart; it’s so unpredictable, you don’t know where it’s going to come from.
I’ve never liked Madonna, she’s nauseating.
I know I’m not everyone’s taste and that’s fine, and that is the beauty of digital and radio that you can find what you want to listen to.
You just have to be you.
I have a terrible fear of more talented people than me thinking I’m just a prat who does kids’ TV.
Don’t get me wrong, there are good presenters. There’s Graham Norton and Johnny Vaughan and Sara Cox.
I don’t think that sliding down a wall with a bottle of Sancerre in your hand at 6:30 in the morning is particularly attractive when you’re approaching 40 and you’ve got a kid.
I only ever wanted to be Barbra Streisand.
My advice to young girls would be, don’t get on a sun bed and don’t smoke – it wrecks your skin.
I was almost arrested in Camden in the 90s.
It’s great fun to try to entertain.
To feel love is the most incredible feeling in the world. To lose it will nearly end you and take you to your knees, but there’s always more.
Everything seems to taste better when you aren’t allowed it yet.
I’m such a different person to the one I was at Radio 1… and I like to think that women are treated slightly differently to back then.
I was lucky enough to go to rehab.
Any other illness and you have time off work, but there is a lot of stigma around mental illness. It’s frightening to talk about it. The people suffering don’t want sympathy.
I love a good cup of tea and you can never have too many mugs. Even better if it’s homemade pottery, inspired by ‘The Great Pottery Throw Down.’
Someone taught me this really lovely thing, which is when you’re panicking or thinking, ‘I can’t do this, I can’t do this,’ you just say, ‘Right. Hi, negative thoughts. Stop bothering me. If you just wait there, I’m going to do this job, then I’ll come back and talk to you later.’
I’m such a Beeb girl, they’ve always been great to me. I’ve worked at ITV and Channel 4, but the BBC has always felt like home.
You know, I look at my kids or my friends and think ‘I couldn’t love you any more.’ And then I do.
I remember seeing Norman Cook swimming in a pair of burgundy pants. I thought: ‘Wow, he looks great.’
I just wanted to be a performer. I was ambitious. I couldn’t sing and I couldn’t act. I could dance a little. So what was there left for me to do? Television presenter. That was it.
I only have vague memories of the Radio 1 days because it was quite a time.
In a way, I got away with a lot because a lot of our partying was done behind closed doors. But I don’t ever want to be that person again, who embarrasses my family with my behaviour.
When my brother and I were small, somebody pointed out that we looked like something out of ‘The Dark Crystal.’ I think it was affectionate, but I’ve never been an oil painting.
When I look at my face, I notice terrible smoker’s lines above my lip and nasty sun damage in the middle of my cheeks.
Erm, you know, honestly, I’ve never done what I do because of the money.
