I think that allowing the nation to become so ignorant about food has been such a backward step - and to be honest I don't think there should be a School Food Trust. It shouldn't be necessary.

I have never managed to put my feet up, ever.

The way to get to like good food is by learning to cook, which is why I'm for ever banging on about children learning to cook.

It takes several doses of any veg before children like it, but once they do they'll like it for life. You wouldn't give up on a child who didn't want to learn to read. Learning to eat is every bit as important.

After opening my first restaurant in 1969, one of the regular customers suggested I write a cookbook, so I did. Then another. After my 12th one, I started to feel stale.

I was elated when I found out my first novel, 'Leaving Patrick,' about a woman who walks out on her husband, was going to be published.

I opened Leith's in Notting Hill in 1969 and it eventually worked its way into being awarded a Michelin star. At the time, there were a few women running small bistros - but I was the first woman to have a 'serious,' expensive restaurant.

What I want to do is produce really delicious food. I want it to look nice, because when you see food you should want to eat it. You shouldn't be saying, 'Oh my goodness, isn't the chef clever, he can weave the Eiffel Tower out of carrot sticks.'

My worst habit is opening the fridge and thinking: 'I'd like to eat something.'

Any woman will tell you after the menopause, nobody whistle at her, well - that's just the beginning. As you get older people don't want you at their parties, we all are prejudiced about old people.

With great difficulty, I persuaded my dentist to saw one of my teeth level with the others. He thought it might kill the tooth, but it didn't. I wanted it done because I was doing a lot of television with food and I saw myself eating with these horrible crooked teeth.

All I need for a perfect holiday is sun and some peace and quiet. Those make for perfect book-writing conditions.

At barbecues, people just like to eat a lot of meat; it's extraordinary. They eat far more than they normally would at a dinner party.

I am very in favour of children having a nap after lunch because then they're not whiney and grizzly by six o'clock.

I'm not clever. But I am level-headed, hard-working, dogged.

The obesity problem among children is very serious. When advertising budgets are big and business can corrupt the way we live so that it becomes the norm to snack all day - and if you are never hungry you are never going to feel like eating a healthy meal - that can't be right.

I believe passionately that the notion of having to work at a marriage is baloney. Making sacrifices and being a martyr makes one hell of a bad marriage.

The most followed chef is Delia Smith. She is my age and doesn't try to be entertaining, she encourages people to learn the basics.

I've never been much of a cake-maker.

Modern cookbooks are marketing tools for chefs. They're in the bestseller lists but no one cooks from them.

I went to the Sorbonne in Paris for two years and read all the classics by authors like Victor Hugo and Guy de Maupassant. I was supposed to read them in French but I cheated and used the English versions instead.

Children aren't being taught to cook or encouraged to try things or told why food is important.

I didn't actually know what a treasure 'The Great British Bake Off' was, so I just thought, 'oh it'll be fun to do that, I'd like to do that.' Then when I went and had to have an audition and meet Paul Hollywood, I suddenly thought, 'this is really important.'

People say I'm a celebrity chef, and I am on telly a lot but that's because I judge contests. Perhaps I'm more of a celebrity eater than a cook.

It's so nice to slip into the lap of luxury.

Food shouldn't do you any harm, obviously you don't want a bad diet, but it should be one of life's great pleasures.

In my 40s: I had two children young enough to think their parents wonderful, my business was booming, I was happily married and living in the Cotswolds with a veg garden and ponies in the paddock. Who could not be happy?

I've been an entrepreneur, a writer, a food correspondent. I might have been an architect - but I'm bad at maths.

It's tough to eat well if you don't know how to cook.

Now the look of the book dictates the sale. In my day you could still buy a good cookbook in paperback with no pictures at all. I doubt if that would sell today. But those books were much used: they lived in the kitchen and got splattered with custard and gravy.

My first taste memory is of our nanny in South Africa making white bread sandwiches with salad cream, which was potato mashed with a cheap mayonnaise thing with bits in it of - I suppose - pickled cucumber. I absolutely loved them.

I go to Michelin-starred restaurants as part of my job, but that's not how I want to eat all the time.

I couldn't live without my faithful companion, Megs the dog.

I prefer pub food to posh food.

You can serve good food on a budget provided you don't waste it.

I get more questions about my necklaces and specs than I do about food.

I used to always employ South Africans and Aussies and Kiwis - I can't admit this, well I can now, but I couldn't admit it at the time - but I didn't want wet English lads who didn't want to work in the catering trade anyway.

I went to drama school but soon realised I was terrible at acting, so I ditched drama school for art school.

I'd love to look incredibly glamorous, but I am a wholesome, comforting nanny type: I think I look like an advertisement for wholemeal flour or something.

I am not saying celebrity chefs don't encourage children to cook. However, their programmes are so entertaining, you end up stuffing your face with Pot Noodles instead of learning from them.

I'm a good cook, I am not a great cook. I'm an absolute fraud.

Aged six, I sailed from South Africa to England by steam ship with my family. It was a three-week journey. I remember crying on my birthday when I didn't get the enormous teddy bear that was for sale in the ship's shop but, aside from that, I had a wonderful time.

Very few parents give out healthy lunchboxes due to pressure from their children.

People often ask what my favourite food is, but the answer depends on what I last ate. I love sausages and mash. But if I'd already eaten them for lunch, then you asked me at tea-time, I'd probably answer 'crab salad.'

I'd been brought up in a society which didn't talk about sex, food, money, religion or politics. Those things were all deemed slightly rude.

I've always had an image of Mother's Pride flour, very respectable and middle-class.

For me the best food in the world is New British. It's quite classical cooking with really simple but good-quality ingredients. I also like top-end restaurants and pub grub done well.

I think the most important thing in the whole world is love and relationships, and if you don't have them it's quite bad.

My grandchildren love cooking, and it doesn't have to be sweet things.

I won't eat something which is high in calories and not particularly wonderful, because that's just not worth it, you feel guilty after.