“Look, girls and boys are different. Girls like to be touched twenty times a day in a nonsexual way to feel good about themselves - that is why I tickle you and link arms with you - but boys think about sex, snogging and football, and also snogging whilst playing football. Simple.”

“I could have quite literally snogged until the cows came home. And when they came home I would have shouted, "WHAT HAVE YOU COWS COME HOME FOR? CAN'T YOU SEE I'M SNOGGING, YOU STUPID HERBIVORES???”

“Boys are like elastic bands. It doesn't mean that boys are made of elastic, which is a plus because nobody wants a boyfriend made out of rubber. On the other hand, if they were made out of rubber, you could save yourself a lot of time and effort and heartache by just rustling one up out of a car tire. Boys are different from girls. Girls like to be cozy all the time but boys don't. First of all, they like to get all close to you like a coiled-up rubber band, but after a while, they get fed up with being too coiled and need to stretch away to their full stretchiness. Then, after a bit of on-their-own strategy, they ping back to be close to you. So in conclusion on the boy front, you have to play hard to get and also let them be elastic bands.”

“Hello, my sister, Libby, also your daughter, is snogging a potato in my bed. What are you going to do about it?' Dad started yelling uncontrollably. I wonder if he is having the male menopause? If he starts growing breasts, I will definitely be running away with the circus.”

“Anyway, then it said on the news, 'And tonight the Prime Minister has just got to Number Ten.'I looked down at Jas and said, 'Ooer.' Meaning he'd got to number ten on the snogging scale. And then we both laughed like loons.Vati just looked at us like we were mad.”

“There he is, tall, tanned, Italian, sophisticated. So what do you do?"I said, "Er, leap on him and snog him within an inch of his life? Taking care not to strangle myself on his false beard, or disturb his banana.”

“My cousin Georgia says that boys are like gazelles. She says the get alarmed when they get close to girls. And they have to leap off into the woods like gazelles in trousers. Or have I just made that up?”