I've always been quite famous for my nose.

Everything is not beautiful at the ballet. It's tough.

I was pretty rubbish when I first started dancing. I didn't understand the discipline of working on one step over and over again. If you look at it from the outside, you'd think, 'Why would anybody want to do that?' But you just want to get it perfect. It is that constant inner striving that you fall in love with.

This perception that we can be stars without any work and just appear is rubbish.

I've come to realise that being on 'Strictly' is like being in another theatre company and performing a live production.

I worked very hard to be a diva. But it never worked.

There are always younger and better dancers fighting to get your place. You get worn down by the fight to try to stay at the top.

When I coach dancers, I always like to get on the dance floor with them or describe something by showing them.

I would love more children, but no. I'm very lucky to have had my two.

Since finishing my professional dancing career, I've been conscious of not letting myself go.

I am not a big vitamin-taker. I have vitamin C during the winter, but eating lots of fruit and veg does the trick.

I'm a size 8-10. I never weigh myself - I go on how tight my jeans are.

I need to have dark chocolate in the cupboard - Green & Black's is good, but any will do.

The orthopaedic surgeon said that if ever I had hip or groin pain, I should rest until the pain went. However, resting is not part of a dancer's life - so I just danced through the pain.

I had once been told my ability to read would only reach that of a ten-year-old, but I was determined to achieve more.

We only open a couple of presents on Christmas morning; we're all about the stockings - we even get them for the dogs!

On Boxing Day, we always go for a walk in our wellies with the dogs, no matter where we are.

When I had kids, I had to work out how to keep my stamina up. I learned the power of protein and eating a variety of foods.

If I'm dehydrated, my muscles feel almost squeaky.

Dancers are working their bodies just like a marathon runner would, and you have to eat to make it through a three-hour performance. Dancers put their bodies through incredible strain.

I danced so intensely, I learned the hard way that sometimes you can push your body too far.

Dancing has always been a passion for me, one that I will probably never be rid of.

I wanted to inspire every little girl who wants to be a dancer to fire their imagination about the joys of being on the stage.

When I started, there was a very strong image of what the ballerina was supposed to be in her tights and her costume, and then I started doing photo shoots in bomber boots, and it wasn't seen as the done thing.

I always knew I was a bit different from my friends, had too much energy, and suddenly I could get it all out with ballet.

I suppose you could say there is an in-built stubbornness to me.

I used to wear long jumpers, but they made me look like a bag tied up in the middle.

I love Australia; it's such an outdoor life.

I'm a grazer by nature - fruit, nuts - but I try to discipline myself and sit down for regular meals when the girls are around, as I want to instil good habits in them.

Now I'm on television, I'm far more conscious of my skin than I used to be - I would often leave the theatre with layers of pancake make-up still on my face, but on a medium such as TV, I have to be more fastidious.

The hardest thing about 'Strictly' is having to sit still for so long; it just about kills me.

Fonteyn was our first proper British ballerina, and from the moment I started dancing, her image engulfed me. In my first year at the Royal Ballet School, Margot's statue was outside my dormitory. Like generations of budding ballet dancers before me, I used to touch her middle finger for luck.

I joined the Royal Ballet School when I was 13. Before then, I'd done ballet twice a week after school. The rest of my class had started aged 11, so I'd missed two years and was really far behind.

A teacher's not going to bother being tough on you for no reason; it's when they're not paying you attention that you should worry.

You don't just become a success overnight.

I know, for me, dance did inspire me. Not just in how I feel but that confidence of being able to hold myself and come into a room and just feel comfortable with my body and how I stand and how you present yourself and just how you wear clothes, even.

Classical ballet is very extreme. You're doing it six days a week, and it's a kind of obsession of perfecting a move. So every muscle in your body has been stretched and tightened, stretched and tightened.

I hate when I get stiff, and I really notice that.

I hate exercise when it's a regime, but I love a bit of dance, just moving the whole body.

I can't imagine leaving the theatre altogether. My dressing room has become a home from home.

I hate throwing personal things away, especially my cards. As I know I won't be dancing for ever, these are the things that I will look back on.

Before a show, I usually give myself two-and-a-half hours to get ready. I prepare my shoes first. New ballet pumps can sound like tap shoes. You have to take the noise out of them by hitting them against stone. It takes half an hour to do each pair, and I can go through three pairs in one night.

As long as everything is happy at home, I can be totally selfish at work.

I am damn good with money.

I've always been quite conscious of it, though I don't know why. I would never overspend, and I have to know exactly what I've got so that I avoid going into overdraft. I watch my pennies, and I'm quite thrifty.

Sometimes I regret that I don't have a bit more fun with money. I should have spoilt myself a bit more. Life isn't going to last for ever.

If I had a caterer that lived at home, it would be fabulous!

I'm not a big cook at all, but anything easy and quick, like pasta, I'm up to. My husband cooks for me because he finds cooking relaxing.

We always want what we don't have, and I'd like a long, sophisticated nose rather than a short, turned-up one.

I do feel blessed to have small ears - I've never felt self-conscious when my hair is swept back. My feet are a different story - I grew up being painfully aware of them because they are so long.