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 s… - Jacqueline Wilson

[Referring to Trish, her civil partner] I asked her about earlier girlfriends and she said she'd never had a year-after-year relationship, and I thought: "Right, I'm going to be that." And I have been, so far.

It is strange…that sometimes people assume the worst of children if they come from poor families. I remember being astonished when I took my daughter to a party given by her schoolfriend’s parents. They lived in a lovely, big house very near the block of council flats where I grew up. The mother was very friendly to me, and said how pleased she was that our daughters were friends because obviously she could have nothing to do with ‘those dreadful scary rough children from the council flats’. I didn’t want to embarrass her by saying that I had once been one of those very children.

I don't think that girls would ever have wanted a grey-haired, wrinkly writer as a role model if they were wanting to feel good about maybe being gay…I'm sure they could find much more glamorous examples.