It's often discouraging sitting working at home, wondering whether to put the heating on, answering the doorbell to the gas board, feeling it's all utterly pointless.

Our parents provided us with the essentials, then got on with their own lives. Which makes me realise that my parents were brilliant, not for what they did, but more for what they didn't do.

People always say there's no such thing as bad publicity, and you always think they're right, because it seems self-evident: nobody's going to buy a magazine that nobody ever talks about, so people should want to buy a magazine that everybody's talking about.

The reason we all need a mutton alert, which needs constant testing, like smoke alarms, is because there is really no such thing as age-appropriate dressing any longer, as I know because my wardrobe is interchangeable with my daughter's.

With so many forty- and fifty something mums and dads in Converse stalking the streets, I can see why there's a slew of books about the menopause and middle age, the most recent addition being David Bainbridge's plucky, glass-half-full meditation or, as he calls it, 'natural history.'

Being boring is just wrong, isn't it? You wouldn't have got anywhere being boring.

I don't mind being called snobbish, a pain and a social climber, but being called unkind really hurts.

I want 'The Lady' magazine to be restored to its traditional place in the pantheon of weekly magazines.

I went freelance in 1996 and my children are now teenagers and it seemed right.

I'd like to see women get on to boards and run companies despite the fact that men occupy the citadels of power.

If there's anything worse than being 16, it's having parents visibly reliving their own teenage years in your anguished presence.

If you tell the truth you get into trouble, and that's why politicians are extremely dull.

In Germany, salads are assemblies of ham and mayonnaise, not trendy tossed leaves.

It's very hard to self-motivate without someone standing over you snarling, ready to hurl the chalk at your head at the slightest slackening.

Of course I'm naughty. I've always had to compete for attention, you see.

Of one thing there is no doubt: if Paris makes demands of the heart, then Munich makes demands of the stomach.

'The Lady' is a piddling little magazine that no one cares about or buys.

There was a time when no difficult subjects were ever aired in the 'Lady', and sadly, life isn't like that.

When I'm called unkind... that really cuts to the quick. You can say anything else that you like about me.

Without my Johnson trademark mop of yellow hair, I think I would be nothing.