Before I guess mum and dad were everything but now in my case I had two new girls and all of a sudden they're completely dependent on you and there's a third generation. It's a funny shift all of a sudden. You have the babies you have yourself and then you have your parents.

And then before going back for my sophomore year I decided to change my major to arts and sciences and my dad cut a deal with me: He said if I'd quit school he'd pay my rent for the next three years as if I were in school.

I have always had the feeling I could do anything and my dad told me I could. I was in college before I found out he might be wrong.

You know not having my real dad around and having a step dad made me want to be a great dad. So now I have been one for 9 years. And now 3 daughters. So that is what I am - a dad first and foremost before anything else. It's just something that comes natural now.

I didn't have any role models really. My best friend was a dog. My mum and dad saved a dog from the gutter and that dog was my brother before Jesse was born. Sami was his name and he was my role model.

My dad tells me that he took us to a pantomime when I was very very small - panto being a sort of English phenomenon. There's traditionally a part of the show where they'll invite kids up on the stage to interact with the show. I was too young to remember this but my dad says that I was running up onstage before they even asked us.

Before breaking into music I had various jobs: forklift driver driving a courier. But I was forced into working rather than doing it off my own bat because that was my dad's way: you got a job and paid your way.

It wasn't like I was self-motivated. My dad started me. It was his dream before it was mine.

My dad had a commercial film company so he had a videotape player before anyone. So he got Mel Brooks movies or Citizen Kane or some classic old movies. And every summer the revival house in Evanston would show the great films from the '50s and '60s and '70s.

We all started snowboarding in the beginning as a family just to be closer together go on trips. It was our soccer but instead of Dad yelling at me from the sideline he is there riding with me and hitting the jumps even before I am hitting them.