I remember realising while I was there that if I wanted to ensure I was never – in emotional terms – put in a place like that again, to ensure that nobody would ever be able to say to me, ‘I am in control of you and you will do what I say, you will eat what I say, you will bathe when I say, you will wear what I say,’ I had to be independent. And, for that, it was clear, I would need funds. It didn’t worry me that I had no dreams that matched the desire for money. There was no job I wanted, no career I felt drawn to. I would have happily worked on a market stall if I’d thought it would make me money. That said, I wasn’t then and I’m not now driven by money, but I knew it was the means to independence and that drove me forward.
Boarding school makes my early life sound all ponies and privilege, but before I went I’d had a very normal upbringing. I lived with my mum and dad, Rita and Terry, and my brother, Darren, my elder by 18 months, in Edmonton, north London. Until I was 13, I went to a number of different schools, including the local comprehensive. My father was a businessman, in printing, and – whatever that word signals – ambitious. He was starting to make his way in the world, and as he hit his milestones, our life changed, quite visibly. So during my childhood we went from living in a very small terraced house in Mitchell Road which backed on to the milk depot to a slightly bigger three-bedroom house in Empire Avenue, then into a much bigger detached house on the Ridgeway, Cuffley. By the time I was 17, we had an estate in Crews Hill.
That meant there was a powerful feeling all around me, all the way through my childhood, that you could achieve most things through hard work. My father worked all the time and gradually it started to pay off. My mum got a sports car, my dad a Rolls-Royce, we started to go on fancy holidays, my brother and I were eventually moved to private schools – and it was all the result of hard graft. If my dad pulled off a big deal, he would take us to a posh children’s clothes shop in Golders Green called Please Mum and fit us out, which was always exciting. There was never any feeling that he was doing this for himself: his hard work was for the whole family.
It was never just about wanting more. The way I see it, if you have a bit of a spirit in you, you don’t want it broken. That means you can end up finding within yourself a relentless energy and a capacity for hard work to realise your ambitions. In this country, we tend to think that ambition and ruthlessness come hand in hand – that if you’re ambitious, you’re not a very nice person – but I don’t think that’s true at all. I think ambitious people are just the ones who have an inner pride. A spark that sets them apart. They don’t just accept their lot. They’re fighters and grafters and they claw their way out of often difficult circumstances. Alan Sugar is like that, and so is my father. Dad came from very humble origins, not knowing who his father was and with a mother who had to work very hard all her life.
In fact, my dad definitely has all the attributes of an achiever. A lot of people fear failure so much that they can’t achieve anything. They may have the great ideas but they can’t turn them into reality. But my father does. He’s a real go-getter. He understands that saying yes is always the way to do it. He’s a ‘Yes-yes-yes-until-it’s-no’ man. He understands that you have to be personable, able to make decisions and relentlessly hardworking in order to achieve.
As for my mum, she was a conventional mother and housewife and had a different sort of influence on me. She was very glamorous – she and my dad would go out every Saturday night, and every week she had a new dress, with her cigarettes dyed to match the colour of her outfit. She’s still amazed at my achievements and some of the things I do. That said, she has her own steely side and can hold her own in any situation.
Still, the atmosphere I grew up in was not the sort where you set yourself goals and went off and delivered them. It was more a leave-no-stone-unturned, keep-trying, keep-grafting philosophy. We were always striving to do better and that has been a very important influence on me. I don’t just look at where things are and think, This is OK. I look at how things could be better. Good, I find, is always a barrier to being great. If things are good, you don’t want to rock the boat. And some people, some businesses, can’t see why you’d want to change anything about good. But to be great you have to forsake good and take risks. In business, a lot of people settle for the way things are. They don’t have that vision of how things could be improved, or understand that by sheer hard work and gritting your teeth you can make them better. That was a lesson I learnt from my dad and it was a good one.
It may sound contradictory, but although my father’s example of hard work was so important to me, he didn’t really push me or expect a great deal from me, and probably at some points in my life I didn’t expect much of myself either. I wasn’t naturally gifted at anything. I wasn’t keen on sports, I wasn’t the best at art, I wasn’t academic – I wasn’t the best at anything. In fact I was a very average child who really didn’t know what she was going to do or where she was going to go.
I remember feeling ill every time I got a school report, as I’d inevitably get some mediocre grade that would result in a ‘Brady bollocking’ because my parents thought I didn’t try hard enough. I don’t remember being particularly bothered about those, unpleasant as they were, but I do think they helped me gain an underlying steely drive. I was determined to show my parents that when it really mattered I would come into my own. I wasn’t sure when that would be, or how I would achieve it, but I knew somehow I would do something – something better than they expected me to do anyway.
It was that stubborn streak coming out, as it always did. When my brother was 17 my dad bought him a Ferrari as his first car. Not a lot of parents would give their teenage son a car like that, I know, but as I’ve said, my dad loved sharing his success with his family. I had a Ford, but I soon gave it up, got a loan and bought a battered old Golf. Even then I knew it was better to have a battered old car and my freedom.
I do think that, subconsciously, I wanted my parents to be proud of me. I have heard that they are a million times by now but, of course, it doesn’t mean as much when we’re older. Yet even when I was young, I could easily have cut myself away from my family. And I did for a while, going off to do my own thing, without the need for their approval or disapproval. It came back to that independence of mine – I didn’t want anything from them and I didn’t want them to want anything from me.
I’m close to my parents today, though. I speak to my dad every day and I see him and Mum at least once a week. They love my children, and my dad comes to watch the football regularly. He’s supported my husband Paul in his football career, too, first as a player, now as a manager. I know they’re there for me, no matter what.
Of course there were other powerful influences in my childhood. Both of my grandmothers were hard workers, strong women and very important in moulding me. I was very close to my mother’s mother in particular, who put end to that alcoholic tea party when I was three. Grandma Nina was dynamite. She was Italian, from Naples, and incredibly feisty. She would have killed for her family – she wouldn’t have thought twice about it. If someone cut up my grandfather in traffic, she would get out of the car and punch them on the nose.
I’m sure it won’t come as any surprise when I say that she was definitely the one in control of her house and marriage. Grandma Nina would say when, she would say how, she would say how many. She was great with money – not because she had a lot, but she knew the price of everything and she was in charge. My grandfather, Gerald, went out to work as a postman, but she would take his wages and give him cash to spend. That was just the way it was. My brother and I would often spend weekends and holidays with them and she was in and out of our house, so we spent a lot of time together.
Grandma Nina really believed in me. Her attitude was: you can do it, so go out there and get on with it. She always pushed me forward: ‘Get to the front of the queue!’ She was very competitive on my and Darren’s behalf and she was an amazing role model. I looked up to her and loved her very much. And if I get a bit feisty at home my husband will still say to me, ‘Oh, Nina’s here. Nina’s coming out.’
My father’s mother, Grandma Rose, was another hard worker. She worked till she was nearly 80 in the