I was accorded the opportunity to learn by failing - albeit at the cost of a few honourable teachers' sanity - and now I realise what a rare and incredible luxury that is.
If, however, you have richer pursuits in mind and know that no woman should be judged by how she looks - that everything she brings to the party is more important than the size of her arse - then refuse to be sucked into the never ending whirligig of self-doubting, self-hating madness that is stop-start dieting and crazy new exercise regimes.
The crushing, pitiful, and frequently just plain risible pathos of an unsuccessful actor/performer's life is well charted.
My theory is that one needs to be loved completely, unconditionally, and unfettered by parental disapproval, if one is to get happily through life which, after all, presents its own hurdles.
My parents both had Oxford degrees, they read important books, spoke foreign languages, drank real coffee and went to museums for pleasure. People like that don't have fat kids: they were cut out to be winners and winners don't have children who are overweight.
As an actress and comedienne, I'm a huge fan of he theatre and the Tricycle in Kilburn is my favourite in London. I dragged my kids to a performance of 'Twelfth Night' there, where they handed out pizza. Who knew that all it takes to get children interested in Shakespeare is a snack?
