Given this voice, I know it does sound like I've come from money. But my dad was Canadian and my mum Hungarian, so it's not like I have some high-society, upper-class English background.

My mum is very driven and has always kept me busy... She used to say to me, 'Nobody likes a teenager. So use your teenage years to work. Then enjoy your life when you're slightly older.'

My first role was an angel in the nursery nativity. I spotted my mum halfway through and shouted over someone else's lines to ask if she liked my costume. I've learnt not to do that now.

The Bake Off' taps into nostalgic feelings about your mum baking in the kitchen. It's a big ruddy comfort blanket, and you get attached to the bakers. It also genuinely has a good heart.

And my parents' separation was tricky. But my mum had always been really honest with me, and treated me like an adult even when I was really young, so I knew they hadn't been getting on.

I was away a lot on 'Countdown' when the children were young and I couldn't have done it without Mum's help. Because she was at home running all of that, I never had to worry about them.

Growing up, we didn't have anything. My mum wasn't well, so I was in three care homes then foster homes before me and my little brother went back to her. I was passed from pillar to post.

It's important for me to treat a girlfriend with respect. My mum would be horrified if I behaved any differently - and I have sisters, and would hate for them to be treated badly by guys.

My dad was a labourer and my mum had exactly the same job as Noel Gallagher's mum - she was a dinner lady at our local school. Everyone comes over from Ireland and they get the same jobs.

When I was younger, my mum used to dress me in, like, lime green leggings with a matching neon jumper and hair scrunch, so I'd say I've definitely progressed since then in terms of style.

So finally, I can feel a sort of pride in all my family - Mum, Lynn, Corin, Tasha, my cousin Gemma - because, I think how wonderful that this troop of gypsies can carry on telling stories.

I thought about going onto the first one, Pop Idol. My mum was saying, 'Go on!' But I decided not to. 'The X Factor,' though, doesn't really seem to be a show about musical talent anymore.

I look fine. I've had no surgery apart from an operation I had decades ago to remove the fat under my eyes. My mum looked 30 when she was 60, so I guess I owe it all to genes and hair dye.

My British mum met my American dad when she was on holiday in the United States when she was 19. She kinda never looked back. I was born in the United States, raised in Montana and London.

My mum was my inspiration. As cliche as that sounds, she was the reason that we started. She chose cycling to lose weight. I was only eight at the time, so I just followed what my mum did.

I watched Italia '90 with my Mum and Dad and my brother, you know, leaping around the house when the penalties were on... It would be great to be part of that, to have that kind of impact.

Mum used to hide love letters from my boyfriends and put me down. Now I understand that she was a Polish immigrant forced to settle in Chicago. She was jealous of the freedom life gave me.

I could always sing, from a really young age, but my voice was really weird. I used to make my mum turn up the radio every day in our house. She was well into music so I got that from her.

As a kid, I was a dancer in Dick Whittington, Snow White and Cinderella. When I was 14, I played Baby Bear. I had a big head on, and you couldn't see my face. My mum was very disappointed.

I was so driven in high school but did sometimes wish I could go out with friends, go to parties, and be a normal teenager. But having mum as my coach at home meant I couldn't sneak around.

I'd like to say that I'm a rock star, but I'm not - I'm honestly more of a relationship kind of guy. I'm a guy you could take home to meet your mum rather than a guy your mum wouldn't like.

I promised my mum that if something did happen to her, although I never thought anything would, I told her that I wouldn't give up on acting until I got my Oscar. This was her dream for me.

My mum and dad weren't together when I was born. When I was a teenager, dad brought this girl round: here's your sister. She was only two years old, and I never saw her again from that day.

My mum taught me to always make sure you protect your skin with SPF. I always make sure I put my St. Tropez SPF on my face every morning, no matter the weather, before I go out of the house.

I had some difficult times when I first moved to Los Angeles when people would tell me I was saying things wrong. I felt different although my mum kept reminding me it was OK to be different.

I wasn't a happy kid. I felt like my mum ruined our chance of a better life, because when she remarried, we went to live in Bahrain, on a compound with a swimming pool, and she ruined it all.

I'm sure my mum was a huge influence on my wanting to be an actress: just seeing her doing it, seeing her love it, caring about it. Invest in something, take it seriously and be so wonderful.

Every year since I was very small, my family - Mum, Dad, sister Charlie-Ann and brother Stephen - and I have been holidaying in Carvoeiro in the Algarve, so that has very fond memories for me.

You always have guilt as a working mum, and you overcompensate by buying them loads of things. That was what I was doing, anyway. I've kind of realised now that I'm the best mum that I can be.

From working in my mum's tiny chemist shop to my experience building large businesses, I have seen how we should support free enterprise and innovation to ensure Britain has a stronger future.

My mum is great for keeping hold of old classics - pieces of clothing that never age and never go out of fashion. She also says, 'Make sure you always smile - it makes everything look better!'

Journalists have always written that my mum said that I punched a hole through my cot when I was three years old. I don't remember doing that, and I think it was more that I was very energetic.

I think of myself as a mum who finds the time to go to work. I have to check myself for baby sick before I walk out of the house in the morning. I am really a mum... I know I am a great mother.

My dad shaped the footballing side of me, and Mum shaped me as a person. I've always been very close to her - we've only ever had one argument, and that was over something stupid when I was 13.

It's as though all the terms of a family were present at one time rather than his dad and his mum. Not just a present authority, but the resident memory of what qualifies what else is the case.

It's a tough one for me, politics. I grew up in a house where my father is a Christian book salesman and a Tory, and my mum's a social worker. So I can always see the benefits of both arguments.

I've been going to Bicester Village since I was young. My mum and dad really loved that place, and I always used to stock up on clothes. I love the fact that it supports great British designers.

My mum was a children's librarian, so I spent a lot of time in the library. My reading life, because of my mum's work, was evenly split between American, Canadian, Australian and British authors.

I was a really picky eater as a child. Because I was obsessed by Popeye, my mum and aunts would put my food in a can to represent spinach and we'd hum the Popeye tune and then I'd happily eat it.

I hope I'm going to act for the rest of my life. What scares me is that if I get a big head, my mum said she would take me out of the business instantly - and if you knew my mum, she would do it!

I'm very lucky. I have a really supportive husband in Henry, and there's my mum, too. I couldn't have a career and manage the kids' routines and household thing single-handedly. I'd just go crazy.

My mum, she has a very specific way of mixing bourgeois and hippie. She doesn't wear a lot of make-up, but she always has to wear glasses, and she has this huge collection of glasses. And no rules.

My mum especially listens to music in a way that is incredibly feelings-based. There's virtually no snobbery about what sounds are in it, she just wants to hear a song and that is quite refreshing.

If I'm feeling nostalgic, the first thing I do is open a packet of spaghetti, olive oil in a pan, garlic, a little bit of chili, a sprinkle of fresh parsley, and that's it. It reminds me of my mum.

Something my mum taught me years and years and years ago, is life's just too short to carry around a great bucket-load of anger and resentment and bitterness and hatreds and all that sort of stuff.

My mother says that after I first visited the home of the man I later married, she knew it was serious when I told her, 'Mum, he has more books than me!' So, books are at the very heart of my life.

Cod and clementine is one of the things my grandmother cooked for my mum when she was a child. Never one for waste, she'd keep the peel whenever she had a clementine, and this dish puts it to work.

I wear a lot of black, knitwear, skinny jeans and very high heels. My mum used to work for a fashion designer making knitwear, so she knits me lots of chunky scarves, hats and gloves, which I love.

Kylie and I were both taking piano lessons at the time and didn't think of acting. A friend rang mum up and said, 'How about bringing Kylie and Danielle in because they might be right for the part?'

I was 14 when I started modeling. At the end of that first day my mum said, If you want to do this, you're on your own because I'm not traipsing around London ever again like that. It's a nightmare.

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