What’s your earliest childhood memory?
My first childhood memory is remarkable in that it is so unremarkable. I was eating soupy ice cream underneath an orange blossom bush. That smell has stayed with me forever.
What were you like at school?
I was very hard working, quite serious, pretty devoted. I had a group of very good friends but I didn’t actually like school. My school was one where I didn’t really feel there was driving ambition for us to get on. I felt my expectations for myself were limited.
What did you want to be when you grew up?
I wanted to be a doctor. My mother was very supportive of that, but my father, who was a doctor, was very much of the 1950s and 1960s and thought that women shouldn’t be doctors.
What is an interesting fact about you that your parliamentary colleagues may not know?
They probably don’t know that as a young person, I could classify every indigenous wild flower in Aberdeenshire. As an adult, that I make prize-winning jam and chutney. I give it to people I love very much as presents. But I have to love them very much. And when I was a teenager, I never had very much money and I used to make all my own clothes. I found myself thinking the other day that I’d love a new sewing machine. I think it’s the arrival of my grandchild that makes me feel I’d love to make her things that I can give to her.
Why did you give up making clothes?
I had too much else to do, I think. But I made some really fabulous things.
If you could have any superpower what would it be?
One of the things I’d love to do is to wake up one morning knowing more about music, poetry, literature and art. I’ve never had enough time in my adult life to learn about it. I love culture and I’m sure I know more than most people but I’d love to know much, much more. I think it’s one of the things that defines our humanity.
If you were able to give your 15 year old self some advice now, what would it be?
I think it would just be ‘go for it’. Believe in yourself, remember that other people take you at your own valuation, so get your head up and don’t try and be invisible. Just don’t take no for an answer.
Did you ever take no for an answer?
Not taking no for an answer was something my mother always used to say to me and so I was always pretty assertive. I remember having to do one of these psychological tests when I went to university and my assertiveness was off the scale. It’s not something that people would necessarily associate with me but I’m pretty steely when I make up my mind and I’m pretty organised, I think, in the way I go about achieving that. But when I’m doing that, being kind is really important, not being mean and gratuitously spiteful.
Do you have any regrets?
The only thing about regrets is they are a spur to do more. I don’t look back and think I’m so sorry about that. I’m so lucky with the things I’m doing now which are challenging and I believe in. When I went to Harvard at the end of last year, I had quite a crisis of confidence before I went because I wasn’t around my friends or family or the lovely familiarity of my life. I just decided that I would never say no to anything and that’s what I did. I hung out with the students a lot, which I loved. One evening a girl friend called me up and asked if I wanted to go to a seminar on 60s music. We were at 1962 and as they played the music and talked about the songs, I knew all the words. That was my time. I absolutely love the music from the 1960s. I absolutely love Motown.
So you sat there mouthing the words?
No, I sat there singing!
Do you have any recurring dreams or nightmares?
No I don’t actually. I did when my brother died. I find that I process a lot by dreaming. But no, I don’t have any recurring dreams.
What’s the best present you’ve been given?
My daughter sent me the most beautiful flowers on Mother’s Day. My son took me out for brunch. I can’t say there is one present that eclipses all others because what I love is presents that are not just handing over a parcel, but have context. One of the things I love most is giving presents, I spend a lot of time choosing presents.
If you could have three dinner party guests, dead or alive, who would they be?
Bill Clinton would be one. Mozart would be another and I think Freud would be the third.
What’s something that you’ve done once that you’ll never do again?
Paragliding. I did it in Greece about 15 years ago. It was utterly reckless. Someone was killed there a month later. I’ll never do it again, it was a very stupid thing to do as the mother of small children. It was rough and ready.
What mistakes did you make when you were younger?
Not believing in myself. I wasn’t very adventurous and I thought too much happened by accident. My hobby of identifying and classifying wild flowers was, as people have said to me subsequently, quite a remarkable thing. But I didn’t think it was remarkable at all, I just thought it was something I did. It gave me so much pleasure, I also wish I had been more systematic in keeping my books. Diaries that I made, notes I made about where to find specific flowers.
Who would play you in a movie of your life?
I think I’d like Meryl Streep to play me or Emma Thompson.
What’s the most embarrassing thing you’ve done?
I was at university and I was persuaded to get myself all decked up in my flower trouser suit and be the performing go-go dancer. In front of a big audience.
When was the last time you cried?
Oh when my little granddaughter was born. And whenever I think about her. You know something, so many people have said to me you will not believe how you will feel when you become a grandmother. I do feel this physical craving for her. I want to smell her and feel the texture of her skin and my son Matthew said the most wonderful thing to me. He said how much he loved seeing me with her because it made him understand how I looked after him.
When was the last time you made someone laugh?
I make people laugh all the time and they make me laugh. When I went to Liverpool to declare it the city of culture, I got there and there was this huge pomp and circumstance. We drew into Lime Street station and there were flags and a red carpet and I said to my private secretary ‘what’s this?’ And she said, ‘it’s all for you’. I said ‘this is probably as good as it gets’. I stepped off the train and this group of little girls came up to me with this great big bunch of flowers and one of them pushed it into my hand and said ‘here you are big lady. But who are you?’
One of the things about resilience and survival in politics is that you just have to know there is daily humiliation. If you don’t, somebody will say something or do something and if you’re extremely up yourself, you’ll get annoyed.
Harriet Harman and I have this joke that we’re always being taken for each other. I’ll get into a taxi and the driver will say ‘you are the person I most admire’ and sometimes I can’t bring myself to say ‘do you really mean me? Or do you mean Harriet?’ She said in the summer of 2012, she would get back into the back of a taxi and the driver would say ‘thank you for the Olympics’.
But I’ve always thought with big jobs and the pomp and circumstance that comes with it, don’t believe that all this has been done because you are exceptional or unique, they are doing it because you are the secretary of state.
What are you most proud of in your career?
Starting up Sure Start, the Olympics and doing what I regarded as a totally impossible negotiation for Article 13, which then became the basis for the Equality Act.
What would the title of your autobiography be?
Never Take No For An Answer.