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You know, my parents had a restaurant. And I left home, actually, in 1949, when I was 13 years old, to go into apprenticeship. And actually when I left home, home was a restaurant - like I said, my mother was a chef. So I can't remember any time in my life, from age 5, 6, that I wasn't in a kitchen.

There was a time in my life when I was going in and out of houses that were extraordinarily different - from a working-class terrace in Northampton to the homes of friends who were really very wealthy. It was quite an odd position to be in, I realise looking back, and quite a nice one.

I was determined to have a spotless house when I grew up.

We were so poor as kids. I didn't even see a bathtub, running water, hot water, commode - we didn't have any of that. We started with a humble log house, milk cow, garden-raised our own food, killed a hog every year in the fall, and had the meat hanging up in the smokehouse - that was our childhood, me and ol' Si.

When I was nine years old, my family lost our home, and the six of us moved into my grandparents' converted garage.

I grew up in a very normal home.

I was raised by my grandmother on a farm, where we were really poor - we had dirt floors - but so did everybody else.

I was a homebody growing up.

We slept in the park before we had a house, and eventually we shared a home - my parents, my grandparents and five uncles, my family, all of us - on White Oaks Street by Magnolia Street near the railroad. Those were hard times, but I loved living there.

I lived a normal life for a number of years. I had kids. I lived up on a farm in Gloucestershire in rural England, and just kind of got back to reality again.