I had always fancied a go at the comedy and when it started to go reasonably well and the opportunity arose for me to move into it full time, I just couldn't turn it down. I just took the risk, and I just wanted to see if it would work and thankfully it did.

With two small children, I haven't had a wash since 2001 so the chance to go shopping is way down the list. It is something I do intend to get.

I just don't like travelling very much.

It's got too much hard work slapping them and telling them to shut up.

Who do I like? I am a big fan of French and Saunders - not that that they are particularly stand-up I have to say, but I think they have been great for women and they are of themselves just incredibly funny whether they are male or female.

I'm sure some cynical people would point to that as the main reason for doing it for a lot of people.

I wouldn't say I was organised at all. I just have to prioritise. Is it more important for them to be organised, or to have their dinner, do you know what I mean?

One of the guys that used to run it - for some reason I've no idea why he used to call me the Sea Monster and I was just looking around for a name and thought that'll do. That lasted for a couple of years probably.

So, my style has hopefully changed over the years and it is more relaxed, and I do tend to smile and have more than one expression these days hopefully - which I didn't at the beginning.

I had always fancied a go at the comedy and when it started to go reasonably well and the opportunity arose for me to move into it full time, I just couldn't turn it down. I just took the risk, and I just wanted to see if it would work and thankfully it did.

People say you should read your criticism because it will make you a better person but it doesn't. It just makes you a sad bitter old showbiz nightmare.

I made a supreme effort not to do that thing that parents do, which is to bore people without children to death by going on and on about how funny their children are, so there's none of that hopefully.

I find it difficult to judge myself, but people say that I have become a bit more socially acceptable over the years in terms of my material; which apparently at the beginning - though I never really intended it to be - was man hating and now is just a bit more cuddly.

The thing I thought about doing it was it's Comic Relief and you've got to be funny. So although I did try to sing properly it obviously has hilarious results when you can't sing.

I don't know really, it doesn't feel like it has changed to me but I think to have to move with the times. Try out different areas and not get stuck in 1978.

I was really, because I thought it was extremely excruciating when I watched a tape of it, that my husband taped for me and I never watched it again after that.

Over the years I attempted to make my style a bit more relaxed 'cause the initial style you couldn't watch for more than ten minutes without wanting to kill me.

What they did was to make a pilot and it may well go to series at the next festival but I don't have any news on that. It's already been on Paramount actually, but as it's on Paramount it'll probably be on several more times... hopefully.

Again, with two small children it's incredibly hard to commit yourself to anything because you're just getting interested in it and someone comes along and goes I want Thomas The Tank Engine on, and screams the place down until you put it on.

Anything is good if it's made of chocolate.

I think there's a far more general audience now because I've done more populist stuff on telly.

By crying on my bed, drinking quite a lot and feeling tempted by drugs. Well, just not reading it to be perfectly honest with you. I know it's a bit of a copout.

So, I kind of rather was hoping that people thought it would have a nice mixture of different topics and it also takes in the fact that I've had two children recently.

It's inevitable that if you do okay on something like that you don't just annoy people, that it will make a difference because it seemed like such a lot of people so, yes I would have to say that it has done.

I don't know if we will ever try again because those sort of things are very hard to organise but yes, I've known Doon for years and John as well but I hadn't met Will before, and he turned out to be a good laugh.

The reason I used a name was because I was a nurse at the time, and I didn't want my name in Timeout and people from working coming along and taking the piss.

It's a video release as well so I have to be perfectly honest and go, probably not specifically for DVD, but there are extra bits on it that aren't on anything else, so as exciting as that sounds.

A good culture in a hospital can absorb and manage a few bad nurses, but once the culture becomes bad in itself, bad nursing practice is much harder to hide.

A lot of people do that kind of nostalgia stuff believing that they were very happy in their teenage years, but that's probably just an illusion.

And I also felt that no one in an audience could abuse me worse than the sort of abuse I had had at work as a psychiatric nurse.

Anybody who has had the pleasure of reading an article about themselves in the press knows that, on the whole, there is a huge amount of inaccuracy, value judgment and the use of a crowbar to insert editorial bias that reflects the current political leaning of that particular paper.

As a comic and as a nurse, it's important to look calm on the surface when you're absolutely crapping yourself inside. So, if someone is waving a machete at you, which has happened to me when I was a nurse, it's important to make that person feel that you're in control.

As the Tories know, the problem with setting yourself up as a shining example for others to follow is that when you get caught out, that proverbial substance really hits the fan.

Being Christian towards poor people means trying to improve their lives and give them back some self-respect.

Christians have always been fodder for comedians who have tended to portray them as anoraks - slightly clammy, beatifically smiley dullards with barely a personality between them.

Does anyone really go into nursing intending to be apathetic, cold and removed from suffering? I find that very difficult to believe.

Each generation has a backlash against the generation before.

Even nice things don't make you happy when you're tired.

Even when I wasn't overweight I was never one of those girls or women who wanted to look nice. I always thought it wasn't important.

Everything becomes magnified at night. Sounds travel in a different way, it's dark, and everything seems far more spooky.

Having children is fab. They keep me young and make me get up in the morning.

How do you conduct an intimate relationship where no one ever loses it? Where no one ever lashes out, where no one ever smacks anyone in the mouth?

I am a hip-hop artist, as you probably know. My hip-hop name is Big Smalls.

I believe that if your brain has to get to grips with complicated words, then you won't get Alzheimer's. I'm sure it's not true, but I do believe it.

I can honestly say I've never sold any arms to a repressive foreign regime while reassuring everyone at home that the weapons will be used for nice things.

I cannot abide anyone treating another human being like a piece of dirt, whatever the context.

I do say no to lots of things, actually! I know it doesn't look like it. But I have a tendency to a) be rubbish at saying no, and b) be pushed by some kind of Protestant work ethic.

I don't hold any candle for drama versus comedy.

I don't like doing stand-up, because I don't like standing up.