Mum and dad would drive me to the ACT Academy of Sport gym at 5 A.M., sit in the car and read a book, and then drive me to school. I appreciated it when I was younger, but I didn't really understand how much they were putting into it. Now I look at budgets of $70,000 to compete, and I think, 'Wow, they've put so much into this.'
When I wanted to go away to college in Toronto, my dad said, 'You can't go.' When I got to Toronto, I bought a couch, and my dad cried for the whole weekend because, as my mum told me, 'Now you have furniture; he knows you are never coming back.'
I think I remember being held by my mum as a baby.
I don't care where you went to school. There - have I made your day? No? All right, I'll go further: I also don't care what your dad did for a living or how your mum voted. Nor do I mind whether you ate your tea in front of the telly, dinner at the kitchen table, or supper in the dining room.
I never had any plans to become a producer when I was a kid. I wanted to be a DJ, like most other kids at the time. Then my mum bought me a Casio keyboard and I started to sample sounds that I liked.
I like fashion. My mum was a dressmaker, believe it or not, so the consequence of that was that all my clothes were homemade, and I looked like a terrible mess until I was old enough to buy my own. But I love good tailoring.
Mum doesn't like it when I mention that Dad's a better cook than her. He was born in Spain and spent eight years in Portugal and is exceptional at lots of cuisines.
As I flew back from New Zealand to bury my mother, it occurred to me that no matter how harrowing her loss was and how keenly it will always be felt, there was, nevertheless, a sense of relief that my father, sisters and I could say a final goodbye after the longest goodbye and relief that my mum had finally been released.
There's so much fakeness in the fashion world, but Mum and Dad have always given us a good work ethic and were quite worried at first about whether I could make a living from acting. They've been together for 29 years and share the same values. I really do want to have that kind of marriage myself.
My dad is an art director for BBC TV shows, and my mum does screen printing workshops. Both of my parents played instruments, too, and my mum used to have crazy house parties when me and my brother were young - dub and garage would be banging through my house.
Mum and I were delighted to find out we were descended from 'bog-trotters.'
My father was very chic. My mum was always encouraging me. Some parents would say, 'Why don't you be a lawyer, a doctor, or something more important?' They never said that.
Agatha Christie holds special personal memories for me because my mum, a television producer called Pat Sandys, had been the first person to persaude the Agatha Christie estate to put one of her stories on T.V.
I'm not a kingmaker.
I don't want to be someone sitting in my rocking chair at the end saying, 'Well, I passed.' My mum used to say life isn't for sissies.
I'd like to think I'm a normal sort of guy, but go to my mum and she'll probably say, 'You know, Chris was always the daughter out of my three boys.'
I know I can count on my mum and brother to be there for me through good and bad times.
The first sign of real obsession with music was with an old wind-up gramophone that mum had thrown out into the garage. My parents gave me three old 45s - two Supremes records and one Tom Jones record - and I used to come home from school literally every day, go out to the garage, wind this thing up, and play them.
I grew up in a very political household. My mum used to shout at the television. At Mrs. Thatcher.
My mum gave me pretty good genes in that department. She had gorgeous skin. That good English complexion. She never seemed to have a blemish that I knew of.
I'm proud to be Canadian. But I identify as being a British mum.
For my first Bollywood movie, 'Ekk Deewana Tha,' my mum also came over because Mumbai was completely new to me, and I'd heard it's a huge city.
Call me an over anxious, middle-class mum, but my eight-and-a-half-year old son looks very much, to me, like he's headed for a life of crime.
I was a bit of a handful when I was a kid because I was quite hyperactive. Even in the house my mum used to put me in my pram because I was so full-on.
My mum is actually really wholesome.
In my mum's day, you needed to be beautiful for a very short time to catch your man. It didn't start at six and go on until you're 75, right?
It was a fairly happy childhood. My father was working away, and my mum brought up five kids all on her own.
I started off when I was seven years old doing musicals. I was in 'Les Miserables' and 'The Sound of Music,' and my mum's an actress. My parents divorced when I was young, and when she couldn't find a babysitter, I was in the wings, sleeping.
I built up a knowledge of 1960s and '70s British films because my dad used to work nights, and I'd sit up with my mum and watch films - 'How I Won the War' and the films of Richard Lester, Karel Reisz and John Schlesinger.
My dad died in 1980, and I found out afterwards from mum that my piano lessons, which cost £2 a week, took up nearly a third of his income.
My mum's maiden name was Dalglish, so I have Scottish blood in me.
I don't keep any copies of my books in the house - they go to my mum's flat. I don't like them around.
I always wanted to be a writer, from being a little kid onwards. My dad and my mum both had phases when that was what they did.
My dad was a militant atheist, or is a militant atheist. My mum was sort of bought up in a religious family because she was a Protestant from Ireland but wasn't especially religious.
My mum was born and raised in Ghana and has a lot of Ghanaian values and traditions and morals. All that rubbed off on me, and that's why I have a lot of love and good energy in me - that universal energy is a Ghanaian thing.
I'm a West Indian mum and West Indian mums will go to the wall for their children.