As a working mum, it’s really hard to find time in the day to just relax and take a break. I am constantly on the go.
My mum is a rock star, and I idolise her. She was born in a conservative Muslim family, where the girls were not educated much, and she was required to wear a burkha. She felt repressed but dreamt of driving her own car, walking around in jeans and wearing sunglasses, and she did.
My mum’s amazing. She’s the person I admire most, I think, in her sacrifice to me and my sister and her level of emotional sacrifice to people around her. She takes a high level of personal responsibility for the welfare of people around her.
I’ve never really thought I’d get married. It’s not that I’m suspicious of it or anything like that, it’s just that I don’t have a reference for it because my mum wasn’t.
My mum’s really short so she always wears really tall heels, and I used to steal them and now it’s just a part of my everyday life.
My mum raised three kids on her own on sweatshop wages of about six bucks an hour so there was a lot of late rent and landlords knocking on the door.
I deeply adored my mum. She was an extraordinary person, even for the prejudice I’m likely to have. She was beautiful, amusing, a tremendous elaborator of things into comic proportions and extravagant in her imagination.
When I was young, I used to tell my mum that she had to get me on the TV, but then modelling just sort of happened.
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.
When we used to go to the car-wash where people would wipe the windows, my dad would go out and help them and then tip them as well, so I learned my empathy from my dad, and my mum is very empathetic too, but in a very stern way; she will always check my ego.
I had a paper round and every night I would put the dinner on before Mum came home from work. I was capable because I had to be.
My mum taught me to treat people the way I want to be treated.
My mum Mary was always a bright, confident and fiercely independent lady.
I was brought up with psychics and tarot cards. My mum was always told I was going to be in a boy band and be famous as a singer.
I’d like to say that I’m a rock star, but I’m not – I’m honestly more of a relationship kind of guy. I’m a guy you could take home to meet your mum rather than a guy your mum wouldn’t like.
I grew up in London, one of four children. We were a very loud family, not a lot of listening, plenty of talking. My mum was a hearth mother: she loved to gather us all around her – Sunday lunches were a big thing. She was very good at thinking on her feet – people used to say she should go into politics.
I grew up in a very political household. My mum used to shout at the television. At Mrs. Thatcher.
Well, my mum’s been a tennis coach – she coached me till I was 12.
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.
My mum and dad have always enjoyed life, and it’s something that’s been instilled in me. I wake up in a good mood most mornings.
When I was 23, I went backpacking around Australia for three months. I saved up a few grand, quit my job and flew to Sydney, then went to Melbourne and up the East Coast, which was an incredible experience. I remember running out of money and getting my mum to send me a few hundred quid, which helped me get by.
I do most of my shopping over the Internet because as a busy working mum I can do the supermarket shop when the kids have gone to bed.
I went to boarding school in Somerset and loved it so much that my teachers had to make me phone home when I first got there. Whenever I spoke to my mum, at the end of the call I would say, ‘Love you, Mum’, and she would say, ‘Love you the most.’
Both my mum and dad were great readers, and we would go every Saturday morning to the library, and my sister and I had a library card when we could pass off something as a signature, and all of us would come with an armful of books.
My mom is an actress, but she never really pushed me into it, and it was never something I thought I would be doing. She was very happy I decided to, but she certainly doesn’t offer me criticism because she knows I’d tell her to shut up! Nobody wants to hear that from their mum!
It doesn’t matter how old you are or what you do with your life, you will never stop needing your mum. And I will never stop needing mine, so thanks, Mum.
I allow myself to not feel the need to be some sort of wonder woman. You can’t do everything at once and tear your hair out when you miss your baby using a potty for the first time, although my son was obviously very sad that his mum was not there on his big day.
Yes, my mum had a huge influence on my life and the love she had for me, the love we had between each other, did sway me to not do bad things. Sometimes they say the street raised you, but my mum did the raising.
When I became a mum myself, I really struggled to find great kids’ clothes. Everything was either gorgeous but impossible to actually get open to change a nappy and expensive or poor quality.
I remember being four or five, not understanding how to be funny, so just going around the house and my mum and dad’s friends, confusing adults by saying weird things.
At 15, I was playing with the C team at Reims and I wanted to leave. It’s a difficult age for a kid – I wanted to go out with my mates, party… girls… that happens to everyone. Luckily, my mum told me: ‘You don’t know what you want, it’s football – it’s your dream and it could be a great job.’ She was right.
My dad had to work for everything in his life; so did my mum: she cleaned people’s houses and looked after old people. You can be complacent and sit on the couch and complain about the dreams that you missed. Get off the couch!
My roots are Scottish. My dad’s parents are from Scotland, and my mum’s dad is Scots.
I make a wonderful cure-all called Four Thieves, just like my mum did. It’s cider vinegar, 36 cloves of garlic and four herbs, representing four looters of plague victims’ homes in 1665 who had their sentences reduced from burning at the stake to hanging for explaining the recipe that kept them from catching the plague.
I don’t feel I’m as good a mum as my mum was.
My mum loved housework, she basically had OCD.
I’m very lucky. I have a really supportive husband in Henry, and there’s my mum, too. I couldn’t have a career and manage the kids’ routines and household thing single-handedly. I’d just go crazy.
My mum used to tell me to never boil my cabbages twice, and I think it’s artistically valid. While I do find myself on similar themes in my books, I try not to repeat myself, and that’s something which is all too easy to do in series books.
My mum is an artist and very into creative expression and freedom.
My mum always liked poetry, and she had pictures on the wall, so there was this visual stuff around.
I don’t know much about only children. I was the middle one of three, and if ever I was alone with mum and dad, it was a rare moment.
My mum is very political – left wing – and my dad was in the advertising business. They were both from the East Coast: Boston and New York City, respectively.
I thank my mum, dad, and home for keeping me in touch with my own country and my own land. I can be in the studio with Snoop Dogg or singing for Oprah, but I’m still me.
My mum says part of the reason we moved house, it was a rough area at the time, was down to that – they wanted to help me.
I don’t have speed dial, but if I had one, it would probably be my mum.
The only queen I know is my mum.
From as young as I can remember, I always wanted to be a singer… My mum taught me ‘Going Down the Garden to Eat Worms’ for a competition when I was about 4.
My mum is actually really wholesome.
Growing up, I was always really inspired by Disney, and I had a great love of everything they created. My mum was huge fan, and she used to collect stills, and so they were all around the house, and we very much grew up on the early Disney films.
My mother worked in advertising and my father was a journalist. But they split up when I was three and I grew up in a single-parent family. My mum brought my brother and I up.
My British mum met my American dad when she was on holiday in the United States when she was 19. She kinda never looked back. I was born in the United States, raised in Montana and London.
I wanted to get a taste of what it would feel like to be a mum. I’ve always had a strong maternal instinct and ideally I would love one of my own.
When I look back, I am happy that my mum took me to the gymnastics club. I didn’t join gymnastics to become a famous athlete or celebrity; it just happened – I did more than I expected, of course.
I was painfully shy, so my aunt suggested to my mum that me and my brother go to Stage 84, a performing arts school in Yorkshire. I’ve probably romanticised it in my head, but I seem to remember that in the space of an hour’s drama workshop, I was transformed. I went in really shy, and I came out full of confidence.
My mother had a Spanish upbringing. She was an excellent cook. Everything was home-made. We didn’t eat food with smiley faces on it. My Mum passed away in 1994. I miss her. I miss her cooking. It would be nice to have a meal with her again.
