TV presenter Clare Balding has admitted she spent her schooldays feeling like a 'misfit'.
Clare, 42, tells this month's issue of Woman and Home magazine that she has finally shed her insecurities, and no longer cares what other people think about her.
Saying that she now just laughs of any criticism, Clare reveals that throughout her youth, she was blighted by worries about how people regarded her.
"I felt like a misfit at school and I think that's quite common," she said. "But that feeling is an advantage when I interview people because when you're on the sidelines, you're a spectator."
She says that how she felt during her younger years has now had a positive impact on her career.
"I can talk to different characters with different life experiences and I can listen very carefully. I'm much more interested in them than in me in that interview, just as I should be," she explained.
Clare, who lives in London with her civil partner, former BBC radio newsreader Alice Arnold, says she now can't avoid being the centre of attention - something very different from her 'misfit' past.
"I've had so many things, good and bad, said about me. I'm way beyond worrying about what people say," she told the magazine. "If people don't like you as a presenter, you can't protect yourself by saying it's the role they don't like."
"If they don't like me, it's me they don't like – not the part I'm playing. You have to push it aside. You wouldn't make it to work tomorrow if it bothered you. 'Jog on,' I say to myself – and laugh about it."
We love Clare Balding!