I remember appearing on Opportunity Knocks (1956) in about 1973. Believe it or not I was up against a singing Jack Russell - and came second! It wasn't the best of starts but what made it worse was that all the dog did was howl, which made me wonder how bad they thought my voice was.

Someone once said to me 'Never dismiss how you became famous because if you do you're essentially laughing at other people's memories.' And I've always lived by that rule because so many people have good memories of Hi-de-Hi! (1980), I know I do, so I never take it for granted.

As you get a bit more mature, shall we say, and particularly if you're a woman the parts are definitely harder to come by, that's for sure. I think there's no use in sending yourself crazy over it. I know of some people who continually call producers up trying to get parts and sometimes they'll get them if they pester them enough. But I don't do that because if people think you're good enough then you will be good enough so if the phone rings then the phone rings - I'm just lucky that it often does.