I think one wants lots of different lives.

There’s also something of an illusion in that, you can perhaps record a TV thing one month and complete a book the next and then be in a play. Then, if they all come out at once, it looks as if you’re actually juggling a million things.

I look at myself objectively and in a way I see myself as a commodity. Your name becomes somehow outside yourself. Now, when I’m at home being Mrs. Scarfe, that’s when I’m most myself.

Of all the things I do, acting is the thing that grabs most, but there’s another level on which it strikes me as being a little silly. In the end you’re dressing up and deciding to be somebody.

Acting has been very useful to me.

We get a lot of overseas people wanting to order cakes.

I enjoy the crafts on the show enormously, too, when we have experts in showing how to make things. You watch them thinking you’ll go home and do the things yourself, which is fun. Some I have done myself later on.

I think one wants lots of different lives.

I think all good writing is a struggle. To write as well as you feel you can has to be a struggle, almost by definition, because you could always improve.

Having cakes as a business certainly changes things for me – I don’t now sit at home doing a cake for the fun of it anymore. But it’s an extremely happy and pleasureable business to run because people are generally buying cakes for celebrations.