If you're a fat person - and especially if you're a woman - at all stages of your life you'll get abuse for it, so you have to work out a way of dealing with it. The best way is to be humorous about it - that defuses any tension.

I'm not a flag waver for obesity. It's not healthy, and you have a crap life because there is such a downer on it.

I tend to think the world is a bit of a miserable place, so anyone who can add to people's optimistic, cheerful side is doing a good job, which is what I hope I'm doing.

Regular panelists on shows can be terrifying. They own that space, and many guest comics suspect they are favoured in the edit, while their own hilarious jokes end up being ejected into the ether.

There's a general sense that women are more relaxed and less defensive in comedy than they used to be. I think it's easier than it was but underlying it all there is still a pretty sexist view of women on stage, which to me hasn't changed that much.

I think self-esteem is fluid. It's not a fixed state, and so some days are better than others.

It is unrealistic to expect an entire profession to be completely good. There are bound to be some individuals who are stressed, who are unkind, who are a bit rubbish at their job, who are in the wrong career.

I cannot abide anyone treating another human being like a piece of dirt, whatever the context.

When you get to know someone, you find there's something nasty in their woodshed.

Madness isn't altogether a bad thing in comedy.

I've seen a lot of women give up after they've had three or four bad gigs in a row. It's very difficult to learn not to take nasty heckles personally.

My mum taught me to knit when I was a child, and I turn to it, for some weird reason, when I'm feeling depressed.

I never think, 'Where am I going to be in a year's time?' That seems to be a sure way of missing the fact that you might be quite happy now.

I like the purity of stand-up because it is all about whether people laugh at your jokes. Either they laugh or they don't.

My mum always felt that women deserved as much as men, and should have as much power, so I suppose I opted to go into a very male-dominated arena to try and prove that.

With proper acting, I don't know what I would play - I got sent a script for a play, and it said in the notes that my proposed character was 'hideously fat and ugly'. That made my day. I mean, I do know I am no oil painting.

I have two brothers and we basically spent our lives playing in the woods, falling in ponds, getting chased by wasps and riding donkeys that we shouldn't have been riding.

There are 10-20 times more male comics than female comics; it's something to do with the social structure of society.

I have seen good nurses and bad nurses. They existed along a continuum: from hard-working, kind and competent people, to office-hugging, bone-idle types, to apathetic, disengaged automatons.

I think my comedy, the put-downs I do to hecklers, are the accumulated bitterness of years of people feeling that it's perfectly acceptable to make a comment on your appearance when they don't even know you.

How do you conduct an intimate relationship where no one ever loses it? Where no one ever lashes out, where no one ever smacks anyone in the mouth?

As a comic and as a nurse, it's important to look calm on the surface when you're absolutely crapping yourself inside. So, if someone is waving a machete at you, which has happened to me when I was a nurse, it's important to make that person feel that you're in control.

I don't know really, it doesn't feel like it has changed to me but I think to have to move with the times. Try out different areas and not get stuck in 1978.

There are problems with nursing - such as the issue of nurses all having to do degrees these days. But that doesn't mean to say the entire infrastructure of nursing is falling about and that it is populated by unfeeling psychopaths, which is, frankly, the implication sometimes.

I often tell audiences at the start of my shows that I'm not gay because I've got petitions from lesbian groups saying 'Can you tell people you're heterosexual because you're giving us a bad name.'

Television provokes strong opinions, and sometimes we try a bit too hard to appeal to everyone.

One of the guys that used to run it - for some reason I've no idea why he used to call me the Sea Monster and I was just looking around for a name and thought that'll do. That lasted for a couple of years probably.

I think the key attributes for a good speaker are someone that's articulate and someone that puts a fair amount of humour into what they do.

I have no limits to my ambition for the Liberal Democrats.

When I was a little girl, about eight, I remember going into the Body Shop - that was my first introduction to campaigning. There would always be a petition at the till about fair-trade or stop testing on animals, and the message was: get involved and make change.

With parenting, like any other skill in life, practice makes perfect.

I am so glad that as a party the Liberal Democrats are united in our resolve to fight for staying in the EU - it means we don't need to waste time on internal infighting.

The rise of populism has steadily coalesced movements of millions of people around its divisive us-against-them rhetoric, motivating so many more people to become active political campaigners and party members to champion the case for liberal democracy.

We champion freedom - but Brexit will mean the next generation is less free to live, work and love across Europe.

Every day we let this Brexit mess go on means less money being invested in the UK, fewer jobs being created and less tax revenue to pay for our public services.

I loved reading. I was one of those kids who was supposed to go to bed but had a torch under the duvet. That love of reading stayed with me.

I love Harriet Harman, she is a supporter of women of all parties, a kind word, a friendly voice, and this country is lucky to have her.

I joined the Lib Dem party at the Freshers' Fair at the London School of Economics.

But I don't feel that as a politician I'm hugely different. Obviously I have a different set of experiences that chime with experiences that many of my constituents have. I think I essentially still have the same set of values and the issues that are important to me don't seem to have changed hugely.

The piece of legislation that I'm so excited and delighted to be doing is shared parental leave.

I know as an aunt, you fall into the trap of turning to your niece and saying, 'you look beautiful' - because of course all children do look beautiful - but if the message they get is that is what's important and that is what gets praise, then that's not necessarily the most positive message you want them to hear.

I knock on lots of doors, but you don't reach everyone that way - Twitter is just one of many ways of keeping in touch.

My childhood was a mix of ballet classes and debating society. I liked arguing. As a teenager, I wanted to be an author. Later on, inspired by Young Enterprise and the Body Shop founder Anita Roddick, I decided I wanted to go into business.

We will never achieve equality in the workplace until we have more equality in the home. Our plans for an extra four weeks of parental leave specifically for fathers will help tackle the assumption that parenting is one of the 'girl jobs'.

By stopping Brexit, investing in skills and providing tailored support to key industries, we can get the UK economy back on track and help the communities that have been hit hardest by the threat of Brexit.

If we want a Parliament that understands people's lives when it takes decisions, it needs to be representative of society, which includes having MPs who are parents of small children - both mums and dads.

There are five main barriers to women entering politics - I like to think of them as the five Cs: cash, caring, culture, confidence, and the closed club.

Far from the quick and easy exit that Leave campaigners once promised, Brexit has become mired in its own internal contradictions.

A book I often refer to by Naomi Klein is called 'No Is Not Enough'. It's not enough to be against something. You have to actually be for something. A better alternative. For me, that's about transformation.

You look at the sports pages and you'd often be forgiven for thinking women didn't do sport.