My love of music comes from as long as I remember. I begged my mum to learn piano for a year when I was 4; she wanted to make sure I was serious, and I wanted to be Chuck Berry when I grew up! We were a very musical family; my mum would play guitar, and her, my dad and aunt would sing and harmonize!
But it's funny, I really was quite introverted as a child. I just liked music, so mum and dad bought me a piano when I was seven - I actually got up to Grade Seven at the London College of Music on piano.
I'm a huge romantic but I've been unlucky in love. My mum and dad have been together since my mum was 18 and the problem with that is that me and my sister are always looking for my dad. And he doesn't exist because, well, Dad's Dad!
I've never tried to find my real parents. I'm very grateful to my mum and dad for adopting me - they're completely incredible people. It was my dad who encouraged me to question everything, to forge my own path, to think, to read. I always felt it was my right to question everything.
My family always helped me. I had people around me who always pushed me to be the best: my dad, my mum. My dad used to play and coach as well. But I wasn't born with shiny things.
When I was born, my dad was a scaffolder, and my mum worked in a chip shop. Then my mum taught herself how to be a hairdresser and ended up with her own salon; my dad became a postman and then a counter clerk. Our first house didn't have a bathroom.
I grew up in a house where my father encouraged my brother and me to fail. I specifically remember coming home and saying, 'Dad, Dad, I tried out for this or that and I was horrible,' and he would high-five me and say, 'Way to go.'
My mum was very good at making me take up musical instruments, so although there was no popular music she made me learn the recorder when I was three, the violin when I was five and the piano when I was seven. I took up the guitar myself when I was 14.
I think of myself as Rebecca Wells from Lodi Plantation, in Central Louisiana, a girl who was lucky enough to be born into a family that encouraged creativity and didn't call me lazy or nuts when I dressed up in my mother's peignoirs and played the piano, having painted a small sign decorated in glitter that read 'The Piano Fairy Girl.
I think of myself as Rebecca Wells from Lodi Plantation, in Central Louisiana, a girl who was lucky enough to be born into a family that encouraged creativity and didn't call me lazy or nuts when I dressed up in my mother's peignoirs and played the piano, having painted a small sign decorated in glitter that read 'The Piano Fairy Girl.'
My dad is Greek and my mum Jamaican. My grandparents brought me up for most of my childhood, but I saw my mum and dad all the time.
Awards go up at Mum and Dad's, but home is home, and I don't like to bring the office home.
I was once a fortunate man but at some point fortune abandoned me. But true good fortune is what you make for yourself. Good fortune: good character, good intentions, and good actions.
My dad was a musician who went to Berklee, and he made me learn piano when I was five.
I used to tell my mum to leave my dad when I was, like, nine. I loved my father, don't get me wrong. I really loved him, but he wasn't a good dad, and he wasn't a good husband.
If there is some sort of trouble at home, kids don't think that James Bond is going to come save their mum from their dad, or their dad from their mum. They don't think, "Bond is going to come and save me." Superman is a different sort of idealized figure.