My education. Benedictine monks didn’t really prepare me for the life I have lived.

My mum died in her early 70s, and for the last six or seven years of her life she couldn’t move, didn’t speak. By the time our children were born, she was too ill to communicate. I haven’t many regrets in life, but I do regret that they never got to know her, even though she was still alive for a few years. They couldn’t see her warmth, her spirit, her courage.

There are several boyfriends I wish our paths had not crossed.

Maybe I should have agreed to take the job of controller of BBC One when Bill Cotton offered it to me. I do feel a wimp; I would have been the first woman in the job.What do you consider your greatest achievement? I don’t really claim credit, I hope, for helping to launch Childline and the Silver Line and Silver Stories. It is an achievement that they all exist, but that is down to their amazing teams.

When I worked out I was gay and decided to leave the church at 29.

Losing the 1992 general election.

The melanoma has returned in your lung.

An earthquake in Peru forced me and a young man into the street, where he had to introduce me to his family at three in the morning.

Totalitarianism in Europe.

Getting elected as MP for the Rhondda in 2001 despite everyone saying I was too “exotic” or “flamboyant”, ie gay.