Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but I also know that funny outlasts pretty any day of the week.Collection: Beauty
Parenting is a rollercoaster of baloney with no instruction manual. We just have to do our best.Collection: Parenting
As a relentless romantic, the prospect of being a 'lonely heart' has always had shameful undertones of desperation and hopelessness, and it's society's way of making you feel a failure.Collection: Failure
If an unfit person pushes themself for a quick fitness fix they could end up with a broken ankle, or I knew it could reignite my chronic back problem.Collection: Fitness
But a lot more women in their 50s are taking greater freedoms and having more independence. I rail against this whole thing that we should go quietly, become invisible and just disappear.Collection: Independence
The behaviour of the child more often than not comes down to the parenting. And before you ask, no, I didn't get it all right. One thing I did get right, I believe, is to make my children understand that the world did not revolve around them at all times.Collection: Parenting
In the good old days when there was no social media and no mobile phones, when you were forced to actually physically meet someone and you often mixed in the same social groups, there was a sense of accountability about things.
Like many, I struggled with exams. That was a great source of frustration as I felt I was only ever being assessed on my performance on a single day.
When your love life is in the hands of algorithms alone, you're heading down a one-way street. And sometimes that's a street sorely lacking in reality, substance or even genuine connection.
We are an island nation and yet, in the 43 years I have lived in England, I believe I've only heard two Public Service Announcements regarding drowning and the dangers of water.
To be quite frank, people shouldn't have to resort to going without heating, putting foil on the backs of their radiators, fleece on their windows or eating cold beans because they can't afford to use the microwave.
I tend to live my life for me. Because I was unfaithful in my first marriage, that doesn't reflect particularly well, whereas I'm pretty sure if I'd been a man, it would have been passed over.
I worked for Andy Coulson and he was very clear... that obviously if a story was to come up about me, he had a duty to run it, but he would speak to me about it first.
By my fourth pregnancy I'd send somebody else to get a pregnancy test because I daren't be seen going into Boots for one.
I'm a hedonist and a spontaneous person who believes in love. While it would feel strange getting married again, I can't ever rule it out for the future.
I'm old school and had trained to be a presenter, but suddenly everyone on social media thought they could perform that role too. There were also so many commercial TV channels and more trashy shows. Although I love watching them, I didn't want to be part of them.
As my 50th loomed, I had this feeling that if I didn't go on ;MasterChef' now, I probably never would. After a break of many years from TV, it seemed like the right time and place to dip back into it.
I'm trying to find a way to love my body. It's a bit wrinkly but that's how it is. In terrible lighting it can look alright.
What I know so far: I'm a lioness of boundless proportions. I am fierce; I am loyal. Passion courses through my veins; fire scorches my heart and imagination canters like a wild horse through my buoyant, tangled mind.
I love with reckless abandon and ardour at times when caution and circumspection might be the order of the day.
Everyone was having fun in their 20s and 30s. I wasn't. I had a career. I married at 23. Had first child at 27. For me life was about family and career.
I was always previously looking for The One. I am not any more. I don't need anyone. I am really happy in my own company.
I hated my girls' love of princesses, ballet and all things pink and glittery. I didn't want it foisted on them at such a tender age.
I love a masculine man. That's just me. It doesn't ever have to be at the expense of him being in touch with his feminine side.
Apart from anything else, in the most genuinely self-deprecating way, I find it very hard to watch myself on screen, whatever you might think.
I have people I don't particularly want around me over Christmas, family with whom relationships have been volatile, unreliable or painful.
If you go on a reality show in the vain hope you might be viewed as something other than who people believe you are, you will come unstuck.
A couple of years into filming 'Gladiators', I became pregnant with my first child, and as someone who'd had maternity coursing through her veins since she was young, I threw myself head-first into all things motherhood.
Many women are great at having a separate life that runs alongside motherhood because they've smartly worked out that they need to hold on to their identity as a woman, a friend, a colleague and a professional in order that they don't lose themselves.
Plenty of successful women started either as an unrecognised grafter or as a bit of decoration to the side of the screen.
Norland nannies teach 'emotion coaching' which enables the child to talk through difficult emotions or events, and instructs them to find different ways of dealing with them.
Life gets busy and we choose the path of least resistance when it comes to bringing up our children.
Women have been programmed to criticise their own bodies because we should have the shape that society, and in particular men, want.
I have to actively stop myself from calling bits of myself 'fat' whenever I see something wobble because, fundamentally, I know that it isn't.
I think we may have overlooked men's negative feelings about their bodies because judgment of women has historically always been so much harsher.
I've grown increasingly bored and frustrated with stars and creatives making their political thoughts and beliefs known at showbiz gatherings and award ceremonies.
If kids aren't allowed to experience monotony and tedium, it's unlikely they will value the times they are entertained.