As I was growing up, it was made clear that the fat me wasn't welcome, that a thin person was expected and awaited, and impatiently so.

When popularity is your only goal, doing well in class is going to feature very low, if at all, on your priority list.

Success, in whatever form it takes, is a tricky thing - once you've achieved your goal, then what? Where do you aim?

I'm the co-chair of the PTA at my kids' school, Ashmount Primary, in north Islington, London.

Paul Farmer has helped to build amazing health care system in one of the poorest areas of Haiti. He founded Partners in Health, which serves the destitute and the sick in many parts of the world from Haiti to Boston and from Russia to Peru.

When they favor the access of other people to education and health care, the countries of the North not only demonstrate generosity or solidarity, but also implement the principles of respecting and promoting human rights.

I had prostate cancer. It was rather painful and, in many ways, life-changing.

Cancer doesn't just happen to me; it happens to my best friend; it happens to everyone who means something in my life... The truth is, it does take a village to take care of somebody who's sick, and so we just, at all times, tried to be authentic to the actual experience we had.