When I started my ministerial job I brought my daughters into the Department, due to last-minute childcare complications. We had meetings throughout the day and the girls had to play outside the office while mummy went to 'boring' meetings.

My daughter Lila loves the smell of gasoline - she always says, 'Mummy, keep the door open,' when I'm filling up the car. I've heard it is one of the most preferred scents in the world - maybe that's something to study for my next fragrance!

If you have a smothering parent, the effect it can apparently have on a child is to give them, in equal doses, a sense of too much self-esteem, because they are mummy's little princess or prince, and low self-esteem. It affects future relationships.

The 'Planet of the Apes' movies made me wanna - probably unconsciously - be an actor. Seriously. And The Mummy - and 'Hammer horror' movies. 'Fantastic.' I loved stuff like that, and that stuff probably did more than anything to make me wanna do it.

The radiation was worse by far. I had bandages all over my head. I looked like a mummy. On the side of my head and neck and down to my collarbone, I had second-degree burns. My skin blistered and peeled before it grew back. That was the worst part of it.

I probably give 80% more to my children than my father gave to me and still it doesn't come up to scratch. I don't feel guilty about it. Do my children love me? I think that is self-evident. Will they have psychological scars? No, because they have a wonderful mummy.

I remember one day my son, our Robert, was looking at me on the settee and looking at me on the television, and then all of a sudden he said: 'Why don't you bring that pretty mummy home with you?' And I thought: 'Oh dear, I'm going to have to dress up at home now as well!'

Beatrice loves her glamorous dresses and her hair being curly or big - like Mummy's - and I hate volume. I like my hair to be sort of flat. I like just throwing on a pair of jeans and generally being more understated. She is more 'Let's do the glamour.' We're chalk and cheese.

For years I've wanted to write a book about mummies, and had been following the science of mummy CT scans when the premise for 'The Keepsake' occurred to me: what if an 'ancient' mummy turns out to have a bullet in its leg? How does a modern murder victim get turned into a mummy?

Strictly's strength is its appeal to all the family. The greatest compliment I was paid during my stint was from a lady at Paddington station who told me that every time the programme came on her four-year-old son would demand: 'Where's that granny, Mummy? I want the granny to win.'

I sounded like a fantasist at school when you'd go round the class, and they'd say, 'What do Mummy and Daddy do?' I was like, 'Mummy's an actress, and Daddy's a musician, and he plays his guitar with Bonnie Tyler.' And the teachers used to, like, roll their eyes, like, 'She's mental!'

I was never the class clown or put on shows at home. I never thought of acting as something I could do with my life. When I was a kid, I used to run around wrapped in toilet paper so I could be the Mummy. But that wasn't a sign that I was dreaming of being an actor. I was just an odd child.

Mummy was absolutely the rock in my life. It was not that I didn't love my father; he was such a quiet man, and she was not. She was the most vivid person I have ever known. She was accomplished and brave and fearless. She used to say to me, 'I want you to be able to talk to anyone about anything.'

I got married and had a baby, so I was doing the mummy thing. I got hyperemesis and was only supposed to go away for maternity leave, but then it ended up being three or four years, and by that time, it was hard to get back into the music world, so when Drake called, it was the perfect opportunity.

Before every show, I would call my mother and say, 'Mummy, I don't know how I will sing today.' But that would change as soon as I went on stage and would merge with my music. She is my best ally, and I don't want to lose her. Nobody other than her would be concerned if I had eaten or had oiled my hair. She is my queen.

The funny thing is, I was not a fan of horror when I was a kid. I was scared to watch scary movies. And then along came 'Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein,' and 'Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy.' And I like those films because they made scary funny, and it was kind of ironic that I ended up doing the 'Hotel' movies.

When I was a little kid, I wrote this play about all these characters living in a haunted house. There was a witch who lived there, and a mummy. When they were all hassling him, this guy who bought the house - I can't believe I remember this - he said to them, 'Who's paying the mortgage on this haunted house?' I thought that was really funny.

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