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My father, who was jailed for stealing on more than one occasion, just abandoned his fatherly responsibilities and disappeared. I grew up working from the time I was nine years of age. Money was a big issue everywhere I lived.

I was an estate agent for three years. That was pretty grim.

Everything that I've gone through since the end of 2010, from me finding out about my financial adviser stealing, mismanaging my money - that affected everything, from child support, mortgages, to me having to sell my properties, me being in and out of court trying to modify my child support. It's a lot to deal with at one time.

I ran my own business when I was 19, buying condos and renovating apartment buildings.

My father was a small-town banker. He became very ill when I was 10 years old, and we went to California three years later in an attempt to recover his health, which never happened.

I was only 21 when I bought a five-bedroom detached house in Stoke-on-Trent that was way outside of my financial status in life. I did it by borrowing money from my family and the bank, taking out a huge mortgage.

I was on my own union council for twenty-odd years.

I was a very bad accountant; I didn't care about money, golf or discovering fraud. After about a year I was sacked; then I went into teacher training.

It was in 1969 that I was able to give up my administrative responsibility. As I worked hard my research never suffered during this period and as a matter of fact these were probably some of my most productive years.