I was so scared of the water when I was little. I used to grab onto Mum’s hand to get out of the pool. I did not even want to shower.
I always dedicate my goals to my mum. I lost her a couple of years ago. She was my biggest supporter and is always with me.
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 always feel with a vintage shop they’ve picked the best bits to show you whereas with charity shops you can find a real gem. My mum is amazing at it, she has hawk eyes, so I go with her and follow her lead!
My mum will never let me be anything but grounded.
When my mum first told me she got sick, I didn’t cry. I probably cried over my mum’s illness twice.
As my mum still candidly says, I was the runt of the litter.
My mum’s parents were from Ireland, my dad’s mum was American-Irish.
I can still remember my mum (a voracious, if not discriminating, reader – I have seen everything from the sublime to the ridiculous by her bed, from Ian Rankin and Elmore Leonard to Barbara Cartland and James Patterson) taking me to get my library card when I was four and not yet at school.
The best gift I was ever given was the arts. My mum gave me those on a silver platter. Growing up, her and my grandmother would take me to ballets, classical concerts, even smoky jazz clubs I wasn’t supposed to be in!
On the weekend of the Olympic trials, I lashed out at someone I’m really close to. I’ve lashed out at my mum, my siblings. It’s so hard when all you want to do is compete, and your body’s just denying you. But without my family, I’d be nothing.
When I think back to my childhood, it’s with a mixture of amusement and embarrassment. I was always forgetting things. My mum called me scatty because I could never sit still. But there was no sense I was suffering from a medical condition as such.
My mum was a costume designer and costume supervisor in the theater and, especially, the ballet. But that was before I was born.
I inherited my weight problem from my mum. She was always on diets. If there was a box of chocolates in the house, she’d eat half a chocolate, then put the other half back. She loved me, but she did encourage me to diet in my teens.
My mum and my dad have really good taste in movies. My gran would tape them off the TV and write notes about them, rating them.
I was eight when independence happened. I remember my mum and dad getting dressed up to go to the independence concert to go listen to Bob Marley. Independence was such a wonderful time; we had so many expectations of the kind of country we would become. The vision of the government then was a wonderful vision.
But for me it’s loads of pressure. Like, my mum is a strong independent woman, but obviously she relies on me a little bit. My little brother has his own job but he relies on me.
My mum’s from Yorkshire and my parents aren’t snotty or posh – they’re very hard workers, both of them.
My daughter thinks that only her mum is on the television. Every time she sees the screen anywhere she’s like mummy! Because we don’t let her watch the TV.
We were from a predominantly white area, my dad was black and my mum was white, so that had its complications.
Sometimes my mum is very disapproving of my comedy.
I have just been working with Maggie Gyllenhaal, who is also a mum, on a movie called ‘Hysteria.’ She is everywhere because of the nature of film work. Not that I’m name dropping or anything like that. I have to pinch myself when I remember who I’ve been working with.
Mum and Dad sent us to a bilingual school, so we had half the lessons in English and half in French. But I remember being hugely lost.
My mum was a nurse, and her passion was geriatric care. I used to love listening to the old people’s stories in her nursing home and picturing myself in their place. They’d say, ‘I went to school in a horse and cart,’ and I’d just think ‘Wow!’ I’d picture myself in their place – acting was a natural progression.
My mum always used to buy a record every Friday.
But in this case, he had my cell phone and my phone was ringing and I had just come back from Australia on the plane and I thought it was my mum and it was Woody Allen just checking to see if I wanted to be in his movie.
Because we had no money when I was growing up, when I started dancing, I wasn’t allowed to be frivolous – my mum made me go to every lesson because she was paying for it.
My mum is my beauty icon, because she represents what I think beauty is.
My mum took me to the ballet at three, and that was the only time I sat still, with jaw open, mesmerised. She brought me home, and I wouldn’t stop dancing.
I couldn’t live without my music, man. Or me mum.
My dad’s an ex-policeman, and my mum is a sales representative, and they haven’t got the acting bug. Bless them.
My dad was an actor and a writer; my mum was a drama teacher. My grandma was an actress. My aunt is an actress. My granddad was a cameraman. They would’ve been surprised if I wanted to be a dentist or something like that.
I’ve been wearing jeans all my life. I remember my first denim as a kid because my mum used to buy me OshKosh overalls.
I’ve always loved makeup. I’m very, very girly. I used to sit and watch my mum get ready. My mum is very glamorous, and I remember sitting on her bed and watching her apply her makeup, get dressed, and do her hair.
To me, a yummy mummy is a mum in her twenties, like Donna Air.
We were definitely not rich, but we were not poor. My mum always came home from work and did everything so that we ate well.
I think a lot of style is about attitude – posture, deportment, gaze and confidence. I saw that in my mum. She was a cleaner when we were growing up, but she had this stylish presence I admired.
My little brother is four years old and he listens to all my music. I don’t know how he finds it, but he knows how to use an iPad and he’s always online. So one day my mum said: ‘You know what, you have to make something for your little brother,’ and that’s how I made ‘Lean & Bop.’
My mum was a dancer. She would tour the world with a group, and she had me in a dance class when I was still in a nappy. They told her to come back when I could walk.
I was skint, and I had to move back to my mum and dad’s house, back into the room I shared with my brother when I was a kid. I kept getting people on the streets telling me that they loved me; it didn’t mean anything to me because I was still borrowing tenners off my pensioner father to go and get some chicken.
I was already in a band, and the teachers called my mum in and said: ‘Abbey’s so clever, it’s a total waste if she follows her dream’. But I never wanted to do a job I didn’t love, and I’d always wanted to be a model or an actress or a singer.
I found out when I was 18 that Dad had left my mother and the family before he realised he was ill and then died. When I asked Mum about it, she just sort of shrugged it off and said she’d thought I knew about it all along. Of course I hadn’t, though I’m sure she must have been desperately unhappy at the time.
My mum will not speak above a low whisper in public because she doesn’t want to draw attention to herself.
My love of music comes from as long as I remember. I begged my mum to learn piano for a year when I was 4; she wanted to make sure I was serious, and I wanted to be Chuck Berry when I grew up! We were a very musical family; my mum would play guitar, and her, my dad and aunt would sing and harmonize!
I love being a mum. Sometimes I just wish nobody knew who I was.
My father was a general manager with Hyatt, so we lived in the hotel so he would be close by if there were any problems. My mum was always adamant about us not abusing it. So I still had to clean my room. Housekeeping would never come and do it.
My mum knows people in the village who died or were affected by Agent Orange who had kids who are disabled. I could have been an orphan. So many things could have gone wrong but here I am… I realise how lucky I am to be here.
My first role was an angel in the nursery nativity. I spotted my mum halfway through and shouted over someone else’s lines to ask if she liked my costume. I’ve learnt not to do that now.
My mum wouldn’t let me go outside. Coming back from school, the gang men sometimes would say things, but I would walk by, never answer, and my mum would go tell them leave me alone.
My mum especially listens to music in a way that is incredibly feelings-based. There’s virtually no snobbery about what sounds are in it, she just wants to hear a song and that is quite refreshing.
My mum says that I was born 45, and I do remember at six thinking that I should be earning my own living.
Obviously Victoria and Mel B have become mothers and there is a part of me that wants to be a mum.
My mum wanted me to go to university.
My mother was devoted to helping people – with my father’s money! – who had great voices but didn’t have the financial means to study music. He and my mum gave away dozens of music scholarships, and my mum opened a school in town, introduced opera to children and created fantastic programmes.
I remember clearly watching a ‘Sooty Show’ at a theatre and telling my mum I wanted to be up with the puppets, not in the audience.
