You never came home for lunch: you just stayed doing, playing, having fun, surfing, running round.

Both my parents were doctors, and my mother had her surgery in the house. There were six children.

At boarding school you had to wear your name across your chest and your back, and obviously I had a pretty funny name. It wasn't Brown or Smith or Hughes.

I got through my teen years by being a bit of a clown.

You never came home for lunch: you just stayed doing, playing, having fun, surfing, running round.

I spoke French a bit, and I could speak a bit of this and that, and when you were taught those things by people who couldn't really do it, you can do some pretty wonderfully, imaginative horrific things to teachers.

Suddenly I had a contract and I was earning lots of money.