“I was born in Chippenham, Wiltshire. My father was a policeman but shortly after I was born he joined Woolworths and trained with them, so I moved around a lot as a child, living in rented rooms, then a caravan on a farm near Stroud. Our first house was in Banbury where we lived for five years, and most of my secondary schooling was at Keynsham Grammar School between Bath and Bristol where I managed to fail all of my A levels, heaven knows how or why.