My sisters have been baptized and my dad is a deacon at his church now. Sadly my mother passed away but what I can say is that the Jehovah Witnesses took very good care of her up until she died.

My dad worked two jobs and moved us to the suburbs, and just being a black person, I went through a lot of racism and being called names and being bullied every single day. And it was hard. I didn't have any friends.

I listened to the radio, so I was influenced by everyone from Michael Jackson to Milli Vanilli. But thankfully my dad had a collection of Cat Stevens albums while my mom was listening to jazz.

My dad has sometimes felt that I grew up a little lacking in sufficient eccentricity - in the sense that I'm willing to live as an adult in a house with walls that are parallel to each other, that sort of thing.

I was into all kinds of music as a teen - country music, because my dad was in a band that played country, and whatever my sister and brother were into.

My dad was a huge country music fan, but he also had a band and he sang. So he'd listen to a lot of music and the songs that he'd learn for the band were more from the male artists. So my earliest country memories were Waylon Jennings, Conway Twitty, George Jones, Johnny Paycheck even.

I never saw my dad cry. My son saw me cry. My dad never told me he loved me, and consequently I told Scott I loved him every other minute. The point is, I'll make less mistakes than my dad, my sons hopefully will make less mistakes than me, and their sons will make less mistakes than their dads.

Me and my dad are friends. We're cool. I'll never be disappointed again, because I don't expect anything anymore from him. I just let him exist, and that's how we get along.

My dad's family were pretty working class, actually.

My dad tells me that he took us to a pantomime when I was very, very small - panto being a sort of English phenomenon. There's traditionally a part of the show where they'll invite kids up on the stage to interact with the show. I was too young to remember this, but my dad says that I was running up onstage before they even asked us.