Jennifer Saunders seems very relaxed, her booted feet up on a pouffe, snuggled in a big woolly cardie, sipping a mug of tea and talking openly about everything from the menopause to depression, cancer and her empty nest syndrome. Oh, and there are a few laughs, too. The last time we met, six years ago, …
The long wait is over – the surprise TV hit of 2011 is back. Its Danish star Sofie Grabol reveals she’s battling even darker forces. Never act with children or animals, as the old line goes. But now, after the first series of the cult Danish crime thriller, The Killing, we clearly need to coin …
We had been discussing her husband, Simon Torrance, a management consultant, and I asked Monica Ali whether they had met at Oxford, where she read PPP. “No, he went to the other one,” she says, and I nod, “… Loughborough Poly”, at which we both scream with laughter. This joke was unexpectedly playful, apart from …
Beth Ditto is wasted. She’s been on tour around Europe for the past eight weeks with her band the Gossip, and she’s barely had two hours’ sleep a night. So has the self-professed grandma of rock’n’roll – with her love of crocheting, baking and fixing her girlfriends’ hairdos – finally succumbed to its more grungy …
Pauline Prescott talks to Ginny Dougary about public humiliation, private anguish – and why her husband now does the housework. Photo: Phil Fisk. Pauline Prescott and I have been instructed to keep the volume down by a prefectorial therapist down the corridor from our tiny “treatment” room, where we are sitting opposite one another across …
Oxford’s first female Professor of Poetry resigned amid allegations of academic back-stabbing. So what on earth brought on her ‘moment of lunacy’ ? How totally unboring it must be to be Ruth Padel, and that’s quite apart from the recent hoo-ha that prompted her resignation, last May, from her short-lived stint — what should have …
The self-confessed ‘show-off’ talks about her Christmas cabaret show, politics and a crush on Cheryl Cole. Sandi Toksvig has a habit of being picked up by strange women in public conveniences, which sounds like a cheap gag but happens to be true (although not in a George Michael way, obviously). Only the other day, she …
The acclaimed artist has been inspired by her country’s rich oral tradition. Now she is determined to keep that heritage alive Paula Rego is talking about her love of pornography, particularly as penned by Henry Miller: “When I discovered it, I found it really quite wonderful and thought, ‘Gosh, look at that!’ ” Her sooty …
Endometriosis, tapeworm, and an on-off love affair — the bad girl of Brit Art says she has had a tough time, but is now bouncing back. Tracey Emin is serene. That is not a sentence that comes naturally. She has emerged from her year of living dangerously — nothing to do with wild antics and …
Daughter of Arthur Miller, wife of Daniel Day-Lewis… It would have been easy for Rebecca Miller to be overwhelmed by the male presences in her life. Here she talks about how she found her own creative voice, and explains why her stories are filled with echoes of the family and relationships that have shaped her. …