For two weeks I worked behind the players’ bar at Bolton Wanderers football club – footballers don’t tip.

A shoot with a showbusiness icon who I’d loved all my life and shall remain nameless. She walked into the room and immediately said she hated everything. Things went downhill from there. Rough day.

I was a secret shopper and had to do a lot of bookies – Coral and William Hill – all around London. For 18-year-old me looking all fab it was quite scary going in and saying: “Hiya, can I put £4 on No 7 horse, please?” But you got to keep the money when you won.

A comedy gig at an army barracks for thousands of angry, horny squaddies just back from six months in the desert. I was on straight after the stripper.

The summer of 1997. My husband, who is an American, gave up everything to come and live with me in Edinburgh when we were students, and we were so skint but we had so much fun.

My mother and my brother would still be alive. So much of my life has been coping with the grief of losing them.

My creative freedom. I was the creative director of a large fashion brand when I packed it all in to pursue my writing.

People who can’t hear other points of view. Absolute certainty always scares me a little.

At a fashion show after-party in New York in 2004, my friend dared me to push her into the pool. I did, and you’ve never heard laughter die so quickly.

To my younger self. I was incredibly self-loathing and self-doubting, and I’m still undoing that damage 30 years later.