I was happy as a child with my toys in my nursery. I been happier every year since I became a man. But this interlude of school makes a somber grey patch upon the chart of my journey. It was a unending spell of worries that did not then seem petty, and of toil uncheered by fruition; a time of discomfort, restriction and purposeless monotony.

That background helped me a lot, because it taught me to fend for myself from a very early age, and to be responsible. It was an upheaval of an upbringing, which seems to have worked, I guess.

I grew up in Denton, east Manchester, and was raised by my late father, Reg, a barber.

My father wouldn't get us a TV, he wouldn't allow a TV in the house.

I belong to a family of boys who were raised in meager circumstances in central Kansas, and every one of us earned our way as we went along, and it never occurred to us that we were poor, but we were.

Parents give birth; the Guru gives life. These life-givers are the soul of the magnificent building. The school building which the government can construct is like the body, but the teachers are the soul.