Sheila Hancock

I love being in my car with Radio 3 on.

I'm actually involved with DigiSmart, a project to get nine-11-year-olds to love books.

Inventing characters is extraordinary: proper authors say so often that characters 'just appear' and that does happen. These people keep leaping out and saying, why don't you write about me?

If you're creating a story, it's a lovely sort of secret thing going on in your head.

Prompting children to create imaginary worlds is hugely important.

Like Pinter and Orton, the writer, Clive Exton, catches the poetry of modern everyday speech, which, whether we like it or not, includes four-letter words used as verbs, nouns, adverbs and adjectives. But, God, is it difficult to learn.

I always keep my script in the wings - a hangover from my rep days when we had no prompter and, if all else failed, I would make an excuse and rush off the stage to have a quick look.

Even for those who do survive, tumours can affect the functions of the brain and therefore affect a person's personality, preventing many people from working, driving and otherwise leading a normal life.

My husband John Thaw worked with many directors, some of whom cut their teeth working on the 'Sweeney,' 'Kavanagh QC' and 'Morse' before going on to illustrious careers.

I only wrote one diary to be read by others. I went on an exchange to France, working as an au pair, when I was 14 and in a battered red notebook I wrote my experiences for my father to read later.

I've always used diaries to pour out my feelings at the end of each day, as a sort of therapy.

I much prefer grandmotherhood to motherhood.

I've never been one of those nanas who pretends to be young.

Being a grandma is lovely.

I was always a girl who wanted to please her dad, and he so wanted me to succeed.

I would have loved to have been beautiful; to have looked in the mirror and said: 'God you look wonderful.' Do people do that, I wonder. Love what they see in the mirror?

I love beautiful women. I'm not jealous of them at all.

My chin's too big. And my nose - my nose is funny.

It's wonderful to be with people of a younger generation. it really is.

That's why I'm grumpy all the time. Absolutely. Because your ideal never happens. Nothing ever goes right. But the thing about getting older is that you do accept it.