My dad got me a huge board when I was little. He loves to surf. He suited me up and sent me out on this huge wave. I went under, and when I came out and the board hit me in the face. So I said, I never wanted to do this again. I stayed away until I was 13.

We all started snowboarding in the beginning as a family just to be closer together, go on trips. It was our soccer, but instead of Dad yelling at me from the sideline he is there riding with me and hitting the jumps even before I am hitting them.

From 1965 to 1967, my dad, Jack Gilligan, served in Congress and helped pass landmark laws like the Voting Rights Act.

My dad always tell me to make decisions from love and not from fear.

My dad takes care of me as a manager and as a dad. That's his job, you know, to take care of me. He has my best interests at heart.

I can talk to my dad like he's my manager, and put 'Dad' on the back burner. We've been doing it since I was 13.

My dad's a doctor, and when I was 8, I went to one of his medical conferences where they were demonstrating laser surgery on a chicken. I was so mad that a chicken had to die, I never ate meat again.

When I was in nursery school, the teachers asked me, y'know, 'What does your dad do for a living?' So I said 'He helps women get pregnant!' They called my mom and they were like, 'What exactly does your husband do?'

You always hear people saying, 'I hope I'm not turning into my dad', but I'd be honoured if I became half as decent a bloke as he is.

I came back from university thinking I knew all about politics and racism, not knowing my dad had been one of the youngest-serving Labour councillors in the town and had refused to work in South Africa years ago because of the situation there. And he's never mentioned it - you just find out. That's a real man to me. A sleeping lion.