Quotes from Mel Giedroyc

There is something a bit volatile about hosting a big live show like 'Eurovision.' Anything could literally happen.

I love acting, I really do, I've always loved doing it, and it's a joy to be asked to do this. I mean, to do Beatrice, for God's sake, it is the best comedy Shakespeare role for a woman, and to be asked to do it.

When you have a baby in showbiz, people think you've died.

Hate showers, they're weird.

The Bake Off' can get emotional, but 'The Gift' is a whole different league!

Give more acting roles to 48-year-old half-Lithuanians who just don't want to be pigeon-holed as bakery presenters.

I'm bad on passive aggression. I know that.

You can't hurry a loaf of bread. You have to wait for it to prove and rise.

The older I get, as well, bloody hell - time's running out. I just feel, jeez, there's so much to do. I'm not going to try to change the planet but make changes just in a small way.

Maternity bras are the Alcatraz under-wear. If they were a door they'd have a mortise lock, a padlock and the rest.

Mum was in her early 50s when she had four strokes in quick succession that almost took her off. I'd just come down from Cambridge with a rubbish degree. I spent a year reading to her - her eyesight was badly affected - and making sure she got proper rest. It was a special time but very intense, too.

I met Sue Perkins at the Footlights, where she brought the house down at the auditions.

I probably go to church two Sundays out of four.

The Gift' doesn't deal with the neat, tie-me-up-with-a-bow kind of stories - they are grittier, messier, and not all of them have a happy resolution. You are following people and events that are more difficult, more elusive, and therefore harder to pin down.

I got into Cambridge and it all went downhill.

At school in the 1970s, no one cared about bullying. I spent the first four years being the apple of the teachers' eye and being bullied for it.

There is surely a finite amount of European baked goods, isn't there?

I talked to friends who are actors and who do Shakespeare loads, and they all said 'learn it so that your family wants to clobber you, they're so bored.' You can never relax, that's the problem, because when you do, a bit of Shakespeare comes up to bite your cheeky behind. It just does, if you're not really focused on it.

At Trinity College there was a coterie of the poshest of the posh, people you didn't ever see, they were so posh. They went to each other's rooms and, at weekends, each other's estates. I preferred to be with the weirdo bunch of raggle-taggle thesps.

We love live because of the roughness round the edges, the excitement, the madness, and stuff going off on all sorts of weird tangents. It's like hosting a jolly in your house. We're welcoming people in and giving them snacks.

Only now that I'm a mum can I fully understand the terrible pressure parents feel buying presents for their kids. My mum had four children plus all of the extended family and she not only had to feed us all but she bought presents for everyone, too.

I would not describe myself as the best Catholic - I'm a bit of a cherry-picker. I like the community of it.

It was an honour to be asked to do 'The Gift.' The producers took a risk asking me because, coming from a comedy background, I am not known for this kind of highly-charged, emotional show.

Funders, financiers why don't you support childcare? Make it a budget line in your productions and please please let's not be ageist.