I have never been to Ladies' Day at the Grand National. I've never been to any day there, truth be told, and unless they introduce a Scruffy People Who Believe Horse Racing to Be Deeply Cruel Day and pay me to attend I can't see that changing.
Even quicker than the development of super-technology is the human adaptation to taking it for granted. We live in a world where regular people converse publicly with an inanimate object and escape Bedlam or a dunking.
When you meet a new woman who does stand-up, it is instantly like, 'Yes! In the gang'. Because you know the logistics of the job: they travel a lot, it's lonely in dressing rooms, you know that they have bad gigs. That means they don't have to prove themselves to me.
Call centres employ mainly out-of-work actors because vocal skills plus low self-esteem equals reliable cold caller.
The Apollo seats 3,600 people: I could hear them making a huge noise for Milton Jones and Lee Mack. If the audience doesn't make the same amount of noise for you, you feel like you've failed.
When I was 18, I moved out of home. I decided to try to be an actor, so took myself off to slum it with nine humans and a million mice in a red Leytonstone house.
Since I was really small, my mum says I wouldn't talk at breakfast because I would just read the back of the cereal packet.
Many of my memories of my mum are of her in the bath with a book, utilising her limited spare time by simultaneously washing and studying. She left school with no qualifications and now has a PhD. If I seem like I am bragging about this, I am.
After an afternoon of interviewing Siri it turns out there are millions of questions that it can't or won't answer: How did you get my phone number? How many Siris are there? Did you have a Christmas party? Who is playing the tiny xylophone before and after each interaction? Are you spying on us, plotting the downfall of our species?
If you view history as a backdrop, set-dressing or fiction, then 'Pride and Prejudice' is hugely entertaining. My reread saw the misery of the female characters' reality. My new reaction was sadness and fury. Knowledge ruins everything!
Pride and Prejudice' is set in the early 19th century. At that time, women had the legal status of children. A daughter was the property of her father until marriage, when her ownership passed to her husband.
No success will ever quench your thirst - my rich person's therapist told me that.
I was exceptionally opinionated as a teenager, never afraid to rant and ruin a birthday party or cinema trip.
We don't live in a world where, if you commit a crime, your life's over. We as a society believe in rehabilitation. We believe in second and third chances.
For all of the separateness of church and state, Christian morality has shaped Britain and its inhabitants for a very long time.
When I was a small child we were allowed to wait up until midnight on 31 December. Then as the TV chimed, Dad would run to the front door and open it, welcoming the New Year air. This is the kind of entertainment you make in poor families, and cry to your therapist about when you're rich.
Ten years ago, I went to visit my dad in Australia. I walked to the edge of a cliff and looked over and tripped. I righted myself but my head was over the edge. No one saw it.
It sounds like a brag but I've got a separate room in my flat just for unread books; I don't let my read books touch my unread books.
