Did people’s attitudes towards me change after I appeared on TV? Yeah, definitely. During my career I’ve had some flak - particularly doing television.
I was effectively unemployed after my son was born. I resigned from Bristol because I wasn’t happy with the way my career was going then discovered I was pregnant when I was out of a job, but I was freelancing.
We have been talking about public engagement for a decade. For me it is about recognising that the mission of science has to be embedded within our culture - the direction in which science is going has to be determined by all of us, and so we need a dialogue with the public.
One of the big factors in me going to an independent school was the bullying at junior school. But it wasn't an easy choice for my parents. And now, I do have issues with independent schools.
We need to get across the excitement and creativity of science. That it isn't just a list of facts that have already been discovered - but a process, a creative project, that you are generating ideas, testing them and looking for evidence.
I grew up in the Seventies; my dad is an aeronautical engineer and my mum was an English and arts teacher and for a while my family had to exist on one salary.
I was keen to earn my own money from an early age. I had a job as a paper girl in my local village when I was about 11 - and when I was a bit older, around 15, I was a waitress.
I was extremely lucky as I was in one of the last generations of British students who went to university and had my fees paid, and I had a grant as well. I also earned money from my waitressing and designing and selling my own range of dinosaur cards.
In fact, humans have less variation genetically than chimpanzees.
I suppose the thing I’m quite pleased about is that I am, I would hope, a role model for girls and younger women who are thinking about doing science.
If we don’t concentrate on resurrecting science, we’re not going to be able to compete in a global economy.
More useful than beautiful perhaps, my favourite regular programme is 'Question Time'. And Charlie Brooker is just hilarious.
I love Roger Deakin's writing, and enjoyed making a programme about wild swimming for BBC4, inspired by his book about his own aquatic adventures, 'Waterlog'.
The access to information the web provides is both daunting and exciting. Information that was once secreted away in library stacks is now so much more easily available.
It’s incredible that the layout of the centre of Chester, for instance, is still essentially that of the original Roman fort.
I love prehistory - particularly the Neolithic and the Bronze Age. These were times when our ancestors made a revolutionary change from being hunter-gatherers to being farmers, and when great migrations of people spread languages - and genes - across Europe.
Then the BBC approached me in 2005 and asked me to be one of the presenters of the series 'Coast', which turned into a very long-running series.
Biological anthropology tends to focus on skeletons because that's what is often left behind in the ground, but I am a whole-body anatomist, I'm a clinical anatomist and that's what I teach, I teach it all, not just the skeleton, the muscles and nerves, blood vessels.
The environment would be better off and everyone would be healthier if we stopped eating meat.
I have family connections with Salisbury through my godmother. Her sister lived there, so I have very fond memories of visiting the city as a child.
