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I've always had an unsentimental view. I don't think the BBC is my auntie. I worked there for years, and you learn that they don't love you for yourself. They'll use you as long as you're popular. You shouldn't wait until it starts to wane. It can sometimes end badly.

You're playing serious music, and you want to be taken seriously. When they get my age wrong on the program, I wish they'd make me older.

The BBC knew I was successful from early on, but they weren't sure why, and they still aren't sure. What I do has been unconventional from the beginning, so they've never been sure. It just works. It just does.

You turn up on set, and somebody who has come out of Oxford, has done a BBC course, is telling you how to act. You think, 'Do me a favour. Go and make a coffee.'

The challenge is the culture. You have to have a vision for the BBC-it can't merely be that it's big and has a place in the market.

Actually, I think it's quite sensible not to take yourself too seriously.

What comes with a job as a staff member of the BBC is a certain self-censoring that you get utterly used to. You don't say everything you think. You hold back on some things.

I like surprising my audiences, and it's compulsory to have fun and be silly; I never take myself quite too seriously.

Of course I've had a problem with people taking me seriously because of my age. People are always going do that because you're less experienced; you haven't lived as much.