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I wasn't the brightest button in the class at school, but I enjoyed cooking and baking. I wasn't clever enough at Maths O-level to get onto the cookery teaching course I really wanted to do, so I did a catering course instead.

I was rather hopeless at school, but the one subject I seemed to be good at was domestic science.

I actually struggled through teaching myself to cook because I'm completely ignorant in the kitchen. So I did really macho things like trying to make my own curry. Really hardcore stuff.

I didn't have any qualifications when I left school - I had three O-levels.

Cooking and gardening involve so many disciplines: math, chemistry, reading, history.

In my bachelor days, the priority wasn't learning to cook.

I was lucky enough to be fairly quick at understanding what was taught, but unlucky enough not to be really interested in it, so I always got my exams but never had the scholar's love of learning for its own sake.

I was always good at math and science, and I never realized that that was unusual or somehow undesirable.