Julia Davis

If I claim I'm the opposite of my characters, then it'll just sound awful. But I tend to write the sort of things I'd never say because I'm not a very forceful person.

I love watching programmes about food. I always think, 'When I'm old, I'll take up baking.' There's something calming about watching the recipe and thinking, 'I'm going to make that' - and it's never going to happen.

You have to be enough of a parent - you have to be there. If I'm feeling bad, I really do just have to get on with it and try and channel it back into my work somehow, do something positive with it.

People could write stuff that's really offensive, but if it's written within a believable world that has a tone to it, then it can be funny. But if it's just shock-value stuff, then it's not going to work, because it's not coming from a true place.

I was brought up in Guildford, and I think I used to absorb all the suburban things - seeing coffee mornings, women talking... that stuff, really. I was watching Alan Ayckbourn on some documentary, and he was talking about how he was around a lot of women as a child, listening to all that stuff.

I can't just lie in bed and be self-obsessed if there are two children running about who could easily fall down the stairs.

I still think of things for 'Jill' all the time. It's annoying, because I want to be able to find another character who I could write for indefinitely.

That is one thing I really hate about working in TV - you have to shape episodes to exact time-lengths, do like 22 minutes, and it is just so against what you are making.

I sometimes write in a cafe down the road from my house now because I feel guilty trying to work if I can hear them playing. I invariably end up sat in a corner, depressed, retreating into my own world.

My desktop is really chaotic, and I'm always trying to work out where I am going to put all these ideas.