Quotes from Dido Harding

It is generally deemed acceptable to shuttle children and adults between London and Somerset every week, but the considered view is that it would be very cruel to do the same with a dog.

After seven extraordinary and fulfilling years, during which we have transformed TalkTalk's customer experience and laid the foundations for long-term growth, I've decided it's time for me to start handing over the reins at TalkTalk and focus more on my activities in public service.

I am enormously proud of how we have transformed the TalkTalk customer experience.

I was that sort of obnoxious girl, I remember being 10 at careers things where people were talking about becoming secretaries and I said I don't want to be a secretary, I want to have a secretary, and people would sort of look at me slightly perplexed.

I enjoy being slightly scared.

TalkTalk was not a highly trusted brand before the cyber attack but customers now say that we looked after them in difficult circumstances.

Competition drives growth in the end as opposed to monopolies.

I think that Britain's broadband vision needs to be about more people using broadband rather than macho claims about the speed of the technology.

I think we'd be cutting off our hand to spite our face if we demonize private health care.

I had this extraordinary role-model of rags to riches success in my grandfather and yet I was a girl, and girls in a very military family were not meant to have professional careers. I think that created the spur and edge to drive me on.

We don't have very many nights out on our own, and by most people's standards we don't have much of a social life. But for us the compromise works, and I think the best thing I ever did was to have a family.

When I was at Oxford, I was a Thatcher child; I was fascinated by politics and I spent three years being obnoxious in the Oxford Union.

TalkTalk's culture is one of a start-up... new services, desire to innovate, move fast.

I'm a really big believer in chief executives not staying forever.

If big, old-fashioned businesses don't attract female talent, then small up-and-coming ones will, and they will end up winning.

I've stood in front of 500 extremely angry people in Waterford when we closed a call centre there. That's not fun, and the day you think it is fun is the day you shouldn't be doing it.

But I was an utterly hopeless politician and I worked out that I would be much better suited to making money and running businesses than the compromise that is politics.

Unfortunately cybercrime is the crime of our generation.

If being open and honest with my customers is naive then it's fine with me. CEOs who hide behind that all-seeing, all-knowing veneer are playing a game anyway, it's not real. I am quite happy to be seen for who I am.

I've had 20 years, 25 years of running business. I've been well trained by a number of amazing organizations and I've got a lot of implicit, subconscious pattern recognition on how to make business decisions.