I had a very distant relationship with my father. It was always just me and my mother. It was a shattering blow when she died. I was 16.

My mother had a premonition and she felt that hairdressing would be very very good for me.

I've had dialogues with my dead mother over the 40 years since she died.

My father was aloof, very strange and very distant.

My father is Jewish, and I look exactly like him... My mother is British, but she's of French extraction.

My mother was a domestic goddess and Mother Earth figure. She was sweet and placid - just what the perfect wife was supposed to be and I was determined not to be.