The quick success was a bit strange to get used to.

You know, I've always thought that it would be really funny if somebody made a romantic comedy where absolutely everything went well from beginning to end.

No, I've never wanted kids. But I do read about parenting a lot.

And if I'm being honest, I don't think I have an ex-boyfriend who would have something mean to say about me.

I can't remember writing any of the songs that I've written.

I wasn't very ambitious as a child. I'm still not.

But I honestly don't read critics. My dad reads absolutely everything ever written about me. He calls me up to read ecstatic reviews, but I always insist that I can't hear them. If you give value to the good reviews, you have to give value to the criticism.

Hearing my songs in public freaks me out a bit. There was one restaurant I really liked in L.A., but I had to stop going there when they started playing my music. It felt kinda awkward.

The only reason that it takes me seven years to do stuff is because I just don't really have a plan.

I also just accept that I might never want to write a song again.

You can live your whole life in your brain and not experience what's around you. You go crazy that way.

Men are my bread and butter. It's what I live for! I have no shame about that.

In a strange way, I'm way more comfortable onstage than anywhere else.

In a sense it's a lot crazier when you're on the road and it's a lot less stable, but it's actually really healthy for me because it keeps me from isolating, which I tend to do a lot.

I'm a really good parent to myself sometimes, and I do things that make me learn and grow.

You think you're looking at things all the time, but you're not looking at things, you're looking at what your brain is interpreting through light and color. And who knows what everybody else sees?

Because for whatever reason, even though I want to stay home all the time and be left alone, I want to tell the world who I am now.

When I was a kid - 10, 11, 12, 13 - the thing I wanted most in the world was a best friend. I wanted to be important to people; to have people that understood me. I wanted to just be close to somebody.

I don't go on lunch dates with friends. I hear about people having dinner parties, but I never do that. I'm not really human.

There were songs I would write about breaking up with somebody before I broke up with them, months and months before I broke up with them.

If I have one success in my relationship history, it's with the people who listen to my music. I think that they'll be there with me forever, and I'll be there with them forever. And I'm totally satisfied with that.

Life is all about the friendship and the love and the music. It sounds silly, but it is. I want to have that experience as much as I can as an adult, not as a kid doing something that people are telling her she has to do. If anyone gets in my way, I'm going to get them out of my way.

I don't think what I look like is relevant.

I'm not the Queen. I'm not a huge superstar; I don't get paparazzi around me.

I used to get a shiver if I thought about holding balloons, because I was scared of floating away.

Think Oman, and you think desert. But what we found was mile after mile of barren, spiky rubble, cliffs of jutting sharp rocks, unrelieved by a single piece of vegetation or water. We drove for hours across what felt like the surface of the moon. We saw goats foraging but couldn't work out what they could possibly be eating.

Pudding is my favourite part of any meal and I always have one if I can manage it.

You can't beat a good millefeuille, which is basically a posh custard slice. Yum!

Thailand was a revelation to me; the landscapes, the culture, the food and the people.

My own valuation moment: When I started 'Antiques Roadshow,' John Benjamin looked at my engagement ring, which is Victorian. I sat there as a visitor would and he dated it, talked me through the stone, which is an opal, and which mine it would have been from.

I've been on camels before, lumbering slowly through the desert - not hugely exciting, but I enjoyed the 'Lawrence of Arabia' vibe.

Most visitors to Iceland tend to spend just a few hours in Reykjavik before moving on to the geological wonders beyond. I think they are missing out.

My Duke of Edinburgh interview for his 90th in June 2011 was not one of my successes. I knew what to expect: there were some very uncomfortable moments and put-downs, but I think it made for entertaining viewing.

If I were to say anything to my 18-year-old self, it would be, 'Loosen up. Chill out.'

I collect things called 'samplers' which are Victorian pieces of needlework usually done by children in a workhouse to show that they have a skill which can be used in service, stitching household linen or that kind of thing. I think they're very humble and very beautiful.

If you crave a bit of adventure and the unknown, Singapore is not for you.

Don't ask me the secret to a good long-term relationship - I have no idea! Honestly, I think it's just luck.

I love 'The Master And Margarita' by Mikhail Bulgakov, which is about repression in Soviet Russia in the 1930s.

Antiques Roadshow' is a public service. It reflects the nation back to itself, as does 'Question Time.'

I haven't done Botox. Although there are a few women on screen who do, and if you don't do it, which I don't, you look pretty rough by comparison.

I conquered my phobia of camping, although I doubt I'll be pitching my tent at a muddy festival any time soon.

I think it's important to rebel a little bit.

There are a million and one things I'd love to get stuck into. Travel, finally getting to spend some time with the family. And I'd love to become a magistrate.

The BBC is a huge part of the nation's cultural life.

Age is definitely an issue for women in TV. There comes a point - especially if you're a woman - when your career just falls off a cliff. I'm not being self-pitying. That's just the way it is.

In my twenties, I was virulently opposed to anyone commenting on my appearance, lest it come at the expense of my ability.

People are more than two-dimensional, and again I think the complexities in life, and in one's makeup, grow as you get older, partly through experience.

I learnt a salutary lesson when I was being hired for the 'Six O'Clock News' and others were being fired, people who I thought were great, like Jill Dando. Letting her go was a big mistake, in my view. But that is probably going to be me one day - I'll read about it in the press and that will be that.

I'd set out to Oman in search of luxury with culture and family-friendly adventure thrown in. And I found it.

Antiques Roadshow' was the first job I had taken since my children were born that took me away from them consistently over a period of time. That was a big adjustment for all of us.