I had always loved music. I grew up listening to classic country Waylon Jennings Merle Haggard. My dad loved Vern Gosdin and Keith Whitley. So I kept going to class and started getting totally into playing guitar and teaching myself these songs.

My Dad died during the flu epidemic in 1918 when I was 4 years old. He left a lot of classical recordings behind that I began listening to at an early age so he must have been a music lover.

My dad was a football player - a soccer player - for Manchester United and I loved playing football but I also happened to be the guy in class who was pretty good at sight reading. My teacher gave me scripts and I was very comfortable.

My dad grew up in a working-class Jewish neighbourhood and I got a scholarship from my dad's union to go to college. I went there to get an education not as an extension of privilege.

My dad remembers being in school with my uncle and the teacher would say outright to the class that the Japanese were second-class citizens and shouldn't be trusted.

In the 'Garnethill' trilogy people always forget that Maureen O'Donnell's dad was a journalist and she did art history at uni and her brother did law but no-one ever thinks they're middle-class - they're just working class because they speak with accents.

My mom and dad played this music all the time when I was growing up so to me songs by Jerry Lee and Fats Domino are the classics they're the best songs ever.

Although my dad was a doctor we weren't necessarily a super-artsy family. We were just a classic traditional family who got to take a lot of piano lessons and became a bunch of musicians.

My dad's family were pretty working class actually.

People who build family businesses are not classically trained. They have to deal with an enormous amount of politics. You think corporate politics are tough? Go work for your dad or your mom.