Konnie Huq

“There's enough wealth in the world that no one should go without.”

“When I was growing up, I always felt a bit like I didn't quite fit in, a feeling that perhaps still lingers in the background to this very day. I was the small brown girl in the big white suburb.”

“Back in humanity's hunter-gatherer days, you only ate meat if you'd recently made a kill, which required a huge amount of effort, and was therefore relatively rare. There's a reason humans only have one set of incisors to rip our meat apart: we're not supposed to eat the stuff at every meal.”

“Growing up as the youngest daughter to immigrant parents, it was instilled in me from an early age to not be wasteful and to be respectful of money and possessions.”

“By fermenting tiny single-cell organisms we will be able to synthesise all manner of foodstuffs in the future, everything from pasta to eggs, fish and meat. Small tweaks in the process will enable production of different proteins used to replicate food we already eat.”

“I do sometimes like cheesy music like 'Africa' by Toto; naff songs and music.”

“One minute you're up a mountain, the next you're down a well. One minute you're with Tony Blair, the next you're with McFly. Ten years feels like two years when you're in the 'Blue Peter' bubble.”

“In the UK we have general elections roughly every four or five years because we know circumstances, situations and therefore opinions change over time.”

“There were no small brown kids as the centre of the children's fiction I grew up with.”

“I remember as a kid liking long, funny words. And often being into things like that can be perceived as square. But actually, as we know now that we're adults, it's really cool. The more knowledge you have, the better.”

“My husband has a wife who is happy to wander round in old leggings held up with worn elastic. I'm happy with who I am and I'm more concerned with other issues and trying any way I can to make a better world for our children.”

“Having seen many of my friends go through the trial of trying month after month to conceive, then finally the joy of getting pregnant followed by the heartbreak of miscarriage, I know how lonely and isolating it can be to have to go back to square one carrying that heartbreak with you.”

“I've worn a chainmail suit to swim with sharks, glided over Cirencester with a James Bond-style paramotor strapped to my back, eaten hippo steaks and had a bat dive down my bra. And all the while, I had to face the camera and smile.”

“I have surreal dreams, so much so that I can never make head nor tail of them.”

“If, as statistics suggest, millennials' diets are more plant-based than ever, and we continue to bring up our kids to eat less or no meat, the future could be bright - the future could be vegan.”

“An emergency on the labour ward needs to be addressed within minutes or else lifelong disability or even death can follow for the baby or mother.”

“In general, I think we're more or less shaped and formed by our late 20s. Things come along during that time that make us cynical. By the time you're in your 30s, it's hard to unpick those mindsets that have formed. It takes years of therapy to undo them.”

“West Wittering in Chichester is perfect for a short break and if I've got longer, Devon and Cornwall are my favourites places in Britain.”

“I've never been more terrified than when I learned how to paramotor. They attached this machine to my back, as if I was a stuntman in a James Bond movie, and I had to fly over all these trees and patches of concrete in Cirencester.”

“I'm all for education - in fact, I have spent my career extolling its virtues.”