Ann Widdecombe

“The child in the womb has no voice but Parliament's. Many MPs who voted for the 1967 Act did not think they were abandoning the unborn because they were fooled by the supposed safeguards. Now we know just how ineffective those safeguards are.”

“Believing in God was something I took as much for granted as the air I breathed. Religion wasn't something that came out of a box on Sunday.”

“Men are easier to get on with than women. They tend not to make emotional demands on you.”

“The Home Office is a vast department where business as usual means that something is going wrong and, given the nature of the business, the disasters rarely lack a high profile.”

“Cats are ideal for politicians. I had two when I arrived at Westminster, Sooty and Sweep, who had come with a flat I had bought six years earlier in Fulham from someone who was about to go abroad. There was a better offer ahead of me but she took mine because I would take the cats.”

“In 1999 my father died and my mother was coming to live with me. So I left my Kennington flat and bought a house with a garden because my mother loved watching the birds.”

“I am toothy, dumpy, ugly, overweight, a spinster - what the hell?”

“Professionals use 'Strictly' as a relaunch of flagging careers. In my year Kara Tointon won. She had been talking about giving up acting in favour of interior design, but the glitter ball led to a role as Eliza Doolittle in the West End.”

“Secularism has no central goal, it's just promoting endless relativism. That's why there is a huge moral drift in the country. Everybody is infallible except the Pope, if you like.”

“Everything I did in politics affected somebody.”

“On the whole, my disposition is to say yes, unless I've got good reason to say no, and I think that's being in public life.”

“Of course Meghan Markle wasn't driven out of this country by racism. It is a ludicrous claim and symptomatic of how ridiculous the must-be-offended-at-all-costs brigade has become.”

“An MP is an MP whether male or female.”

“I am so used to seeing a blond in the mirror that I forget that for most of my life I was very dark. Old photos are still a bit of a shock.”

“The first visit I made to Australia was in 1996 when I was the prisons' minister and was looking at other countries' penal systems.”

“Commerce and politics do not go with royalty, full stop.”

“Strictly's strength is its appeal to all the family. The greatest compliment I was paid during my stint was from a lady at Paddington station who told me that every time the programme came on her four-year-old son would demand: 'Where's that granny, Mummy? I want the granny to win.'”

“My father was in the admiralty and he rose to a very senior position. He was very formidable; a bit grumpy, but I loved him dearly.”

“What I do not like is militant secularism, whereby anything is acceptable as long as it's not Christian.”

“I always said it was my ambition to have a library - I have one - and my dream was to have a pool. Then 'Strictly' came along.”