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.

We have got to change our ethics and our financial system and our whole way of understanding the world. It has to be a world in which people live rather than die; a sustainable world. It could be great.

I was rich before I had any money. Being rich has nothing to do with anything monetary.

I don't make decisions based on money.

The thing that helped me come to terms with performing was an anxiety, a desperation for acceptance. There was never enough positive motivation in my life.