My mum would have loved Shirley Temple as a daughter – full of confidence, tap-dancing all over the place in flouncy clothes, and showing off. [She h… - Jacqueline Wilson

[Her mother stopped her daughter from wearing any jewelry. Wilson refers to a large rose quartz ring on her finger] I mean, isn't it pathetic when, even in your 70s, you wear things that a psychiatrist would point out is rebelling against your mother?

[After reaching no. 7 in the best-seller lists] But a certain JK Rowling came along and you're never going to beat that. And there's always been one or two others much better than me. [Better or bigger?] Bigger! [laughs] Occasionally better.

I can't think of a book where there's a woman born into a working-class background, who in her 70s is living a very comfortable, upper-middle-class sort of life; a woman who married at 19, had a baby at 21, was a policeman's wife for years, but whose marriage broke up in late middle age and who became very well known for a time. She then met a woman and became very happy with her. There isn't one!