I've never particularly liked the idea of looking back; I'd rather look forward.
From Jane Asher
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 don't agree with the whole 'my mother's my friend' approach, because you're their mum and there has to be a difference between the generations.
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.
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.
We get a lot of overseas people wanting to order cakes.
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.
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.
Acting has been very useful to me.
I think one wants lots of different lives.
4 perspectives
3 perspectives
2 perspectives
1 perspectives