For many years, I didn't even like the idea of doing a one-person play. Public speaking got me past that. I've always been good at public speaking, but I never really enjoyed it. Then I started to really enjoy it, and that's made all the difference.

Though pundits and politicians, weary of the story, are happy to omit facts about voting systems and their private contractors running our public elections, such omissions impair voters and democracy itself.

I think especially older people, and I count myself one, in the business - people get to know who you really are. So there comes a time when you can't just go in and audition without everybody knowing exactly how you've brought up your kids, what you said at the meeting, what kind of food you cook.

Playing Ann Landers is like channeling my mother. That combination of love and the enjoyment of life is my mother. And you find that combination in Ann Landers' letters.

There was one man in the Labour government, Robin Cook, whom I had a very high regard for. He had the courage to speak out and to resign over Iraq. He was an admirable man. But resignation over a matter of principle is not a very fashionable thing in our society.

Class is something that I think seriously about and try to organise my politics around. I think there are lots of novels that don't really engage with questions of class at all, and they get less conversation about issues of social privilege than I do. But it's better to try and talk about it and maybe fail.

Foolish people follow the system, get caught up in media news, what the government wants you to believe and all the higher powers want you to believe, and go down the same path as all the sheep in the cattle market.

Donald Trump has added a whole different factor that we've never seen before, but the audience loves it. We've seen the energy around our state, so many crowds coming; it's good for democracy to have so many people engaged.