I grew up in a culturally and ethnically, but not religious, noisy Jewish household in Crouch End, north London. I was the oldest of three children. I remember my father, who rarely cooked but had to on this occasion because my mum was giving birth, once managed to serve my sister and I fish fingers. They were black on the outside and frozen in the middle. A remarkable feat.
Being the eldest child has perhaps created one of my greatest flaws – an awful habit of trying to fix everybody’s problems. I learned very early to do that rather than to just listen. If there was something going wrong, a crisis in the family, everybody, including my parents, would come to me. As I’ve got older, I’ve understood that that can be annoying.
