I'd been a housewife and mother to our son Thomas Jefferson, and I was looking for a new career. So when my agent called and said a producer named Paul Elliott from E&B productions, the biggest panto company in the country at the time, wanted to meet me I agreed.

I've been doing Pilates since 1974, I lift weights, I power walk every day and I run backwards. That's sometimes a little hard when you're not on your home turf, because you've got to find a place where there are no bumps in the way - or people.

I believe you need scientific proof that something works before you entrust your health to it.

Back then I was called Dumbo because of my ears. I was called Fatty, too. It was hurtful so I became like the class clown. I became the one who was kicked around.

A proper family diary with everyone's events and parties in it really helps organise the household.

Amongst Women concentrated on the family, and the new book concentrates on a small community. The dominant units in Irish society are the family and the locality. The idea was that the whole world would grow out from that small space.

To my father, business was the highest calling, but to my mother, medicine was the top profession.

I do a great deal of work with young children, and if you give a child a problem, he may come up with a highly original solution, because he doesn't have the established route to it.