Sometimes I regret that I don't have a bit more fun with money. I should have spoilt myself a bit more. Life isn't going to last for ever.

I've always been quite conscious of it, though I don't know why. I would never overspend, and I have to know exactly what I've got so that I avoid going into overdraft. I watch my pennies, and I'm quite thrifty.

I am damn good with money.

As long as everything is happy at home, I can be totally selfish at work.

Before a show, I usually give myself two-and-a-half hours to get ready. I prepare my shoes first. New ballet pumps can sound like tap shoes. You have to take the noise out of them by hitting them against stone. It takes half an hour to do each pair, and I can go through three pairs in one night.

I hate throwing personal things away, especially my cards. As I know I won't be dancing for ever, these are the things that I will look back on.

I can't imagine leaving the theatre altogether. My dressing room has become a home from home.

I hate exercise when it's a regime, but I love a bit of dance, just moving the whole body.

I hate when I get stiff, and I really notice that.

Classical ballet is very extreme. You're doing it six days a week, and it's a kind of obsession of perfecting a move. So every muscle in your body has been stretched and tightened, stretched and tightened.

I know, for me, dance did inspire me. Not just in how I feel but that confidence of being able to hold myself and come into a room and just feel comfortable with my body and how I stand and how you present yourself and just how you wear clothes, even.

You don't just become a success overnight.

A teacher's not going to bother being tough on you for no reason; it's when they're not paying you attention that you should worry.

I joined the Royal Ballet School when I was 13. Before then, I'd done ballet twice a week after school. The rest of my class had started aged 11, so I'd missed two years and was really far behind.

Fonteyn was our first proper British ballerina, and from the moment I started dancing, her image engulfed me. In my first year at the Royal Ballet School, Margot's statue was outside my dormitory. Like generations of budding ballet dancers before me, I used to touch her middle finger for luck.

The hardest thing about 'Strictly' is having to sit still for so long; it just about kills me.

Now I'm on television, I'm far more conscious of my skin than I used to be - I would often leave the theatre with layers of pancake make-up still on my face, but on a medium such as TV, I have to be more fastidious.

I'm a grazer by nature - fruit, nuts - but I try to discipline myself and sit down for regular meals when the girls are around, as I want to instil good habits in them.

I love Australia; it's such an outdoor life.

I used to wear long jumpers, but they made me look like a bag tied up in the middle.

I suppose you could say there is an in-built stubbornness to me.

I always knew I was a bit different from my friends, had too much energy, and suddenly I could get it all out with ballet.

When I started, there was a very strong image of what the ballerina was supposed to be in her tights and her costume, and then I started doing photo shoots in bomber boots, and it wasn't seen as the done thing.

I wanted to inspire every little girl who wants to be a dancer to fire their imagination about the joys of being on the stage.