The modern world is personal; people want to know intimate things.

There is a kind of euphoria of grief, a degree of madness.

There is something wrong about being photographed that has nothing to do with vanity.

And, in a funny way, each death is different and you mourn each death differently and each death brings back the death you mourned earlier and you get into a bit of a pile-up.

I know the crew so well, so I forget I'm being filmed. It's like cooking with a friend in the kitchen - you're talking, as you do, and maybe you're telling her about this wonderful way to prepare lamb chops - it's more natural, more honest.

In England and America people tend to graze all day long, but I think it's such a waste to be constantly picking at food because you then can't enjoy a proper full meal when the time comes.

People who have fabulous childhoods have this sense that nothing is ever going to be that good again. With me, I have the sense that nothing is going to be that bad.

Then again, they're not scripted and I feel it's virtually impossible to be anything but yourself when you're in front of the cameras and cooking so there is a measure of truth in what you see.

At some stages of your life you will deal with things and at others you are overwhelmed with misery and anxiety.

Cooking is actually quite aggressive and controlling and sometimes, yes, there is an element of force-feeding going on.

On the whole, I prefer Christmas as an adult than I did as a child.

I never have plans for the future as you never know how things will turn out.

I'm not someone who's endlessly patient and wonderful.

You don't go around grieving all the time, but the grief is still there and always will be.

I think maybe when you live with someone who is really very ill for a long time, it somehow gives you more of a greedy appetite for life and maybe, yes, you are less measured in your behaviour than you would otherwise be.

Emotion is messy, contradictory... and true.

Gordon Ramsay makes me laugh because he knows that I'm not a chef.

I don't believe in low-fat cooking.

I never taste the wine first in restaurants, I just ask the waiter to pour.

I wasn't good with authority, went to lots of schools, didn't like the fact that there was no autonomy.