I'm considered homophobic and crazy about these things and old fashioned. But I think that the family - father mother children - is fundamental to our civilisation.

I'm a strange mixture of my mother's curiosity my father who grew up the son of the manse in a Presbyterian family who had a tremendous sense of duty and responsibility and my mother's father who was always in trouble with gambling debts.

Whole communities are growing up without fathers or male role models. Bringing up a family in the best of circumstances is not easy. To try to do it by placing the entire burden on women - 91% of single-parent families in Britain are headed by the mother according to census data - is practically absurd and morally indefensible.

My mother was passionate. She was stubborn the dominant one in the family. She dominated my father.

If you go from a structure where you have the support and that partner and that construction of a family and that's broken apart I think that's probably a lot harder than always being a single mom and having the father being a support in another area.

We really were a very musical family. Father managed to buy us a small pump organ and I just loved this instrument.

My father never talked about the sacrifices that the family made for me.

I had a number of very strong personalities in my family. My father was a concert flutist the solo flute for Toscanini.

Family life was wonderful. The streets were bleak. The playgrounds were bleak. But home was always warm. My mother and father had a great relationship. I always felt 'safe' there.

I don't hide my feelings but when it comes to illness I guess I don't panic. My father was the same way. I'm the provider for the family and the caretaker. If I panic who is anybody going to run to?