I loved school. You knew where you were emotionally: if you broke the rules, you got lines or detention, whereas home life was more chaotic. Money was tight; my parents had my sister and me, then my father wanted a son. Instead they had triplet girls.

I can’t remember not being able to read. Richmal Crompton was my favourite, but I had passions for Jules Verne, Rudyard Kipling and PG Wodehouse. When I see children on trains or buses now they never have their noses in a book. I see them texting or playing on their phones and a chill of fear for the nation runs through me.

He who dies rich dies disgraced. Andrew Carnegie said that, and I think it’s pretty good. I was brought up in the postwar generation so I’m good at not wasting things, and appalled by people who are wasteful. Since I’ve left university I’ve had more money than I needed. I hate shopping.

The gift of a children’s writer is often to bring complicated issues down to a level where they chime with a child’s capacity to receive. When you hear someone say, “It’s perfectly simple,” you’re about to hear an idiot.

The new feminism calls itself empowerment, but you’re still hobbling around wearing lipstick. Women don’t realise they so easily become the pleat in the economy, taken in and let out as circumstances change. It’s a constant battle.

I am disturbed that babies are now always facing away in pushchairs and slings. You used to be able to look at your baby and it could look at you. There’s something disquieting about the idea of a baby that’s facing the world.

The author is the last person to ask about a film of their book. The advice I was given when Madame Doubtfire was bought was to take the money and run, so that’s what I did. The reality is that someone takes something dear to you, and chops off a finger.

I’m astonished that people elected the Conservatives. There’s this lazy expression which is, “It’s the economy, stupid.” Historically, people didn’t vote so directly in their self-interest.

It enrages me that everybody over the age of 65 is referred to as a “pensioner”. Some of us are still working, and doing Pilates four times a week. If someone referred to me as “pensioner Anne Fine”, I’d recover well enough to slap them.

If I was a less-thorough person, I probably wouldn’t be here. I had postnatal depression and started storing up my antidepressants so I could do away with myself. After three weeks of not taking them I suddenly felt better.

I have no religious belief whatsoever, and am always somewhat astonished that anybody else has a religious belief. Personally, I was completely defeated by the problem of evil in the world.

Madame Doubtfire is being republished as part of a Puffin Book series representing 80 years of writing for children. Twenty titles are now available at £6.99 each