But it's cool working with female directors because I'm a girl so you do relate to them more. You can talk to them about other stuff like clothes and all that.

A female piano player is always pretty cool to me.

And it's absolutely true that male sexual behaviour and female responses to male demands change a lot when they start communicating - and the levels of the communication that I've seen on the ground in very very poor areas are so high and I think why don't we have that here?

I think a lot of writers male and female write as if their parents were killed in a car accident when they were 2 and they have no one to hold accountable. And unfortunately I don't have that. I have parents who I care about what they think.

Female rappers get it the hardest. You have to be a girl yet you have to be just as hard as the guys. I think some female rappers get scared out of the business before they can make it.

One of the best things that ever happened to me is that I'm a woman. That is the way all females should feel.

I've always thought of beauty therapy 'alternative' treatments and the like as the female equivalent of brothels - for essentially self-deceiving people who feel a bit hollow and have to pay to be touched.

What I find most upsetting about this new all-consuming beauty culture is that the obsession with good looks and how you can supposedly attain them is almost entirely female-driven.

There are a lot of female artists my age around at the moment but they're all American and blonde and blue-eyed and smiley. I'm totally the opposite of that. I want to show a bit more attitude and I have an opinion.

Women didn't want to be on the stage with other women because they didn't want their bodies to be compared. They didn't want another female act opening for them because of this weird competitive and tokenistic attitude.