Jools Holland Quotes

I played the piano as a boy for six years, from the time I was six to 12 years old. My piano lessons ended when my father died because our family had no more money. I used to have a mestiza teacher. She'd come once a week to teach me piano lessons, and she'd bribe me each time with an apple; otherwise, I wouldn't play.

I had a good upbringing, we didn't have any money, but there was a lot of love in my family.

Since I was five years old, when my mom was still alive, she would just call me. And we would listen to the radio with Barbra Streisand and Karen Carpenter, and she would ask me to sing with her.

We barely had lights, but my mom always made sure we had food on the table and somewhere to sleep.

I remember my dad took my ice skates. One day I asked my mum: 'Where are my ice skates?' because I loved to skate in the winter. And she said through tears: 'Dad is selling them now… we don't have money for this week.'

When I was maybe three years old, I was obsessed with this song 'Leader of the Band' by Dan Fogelberg. My mom took me to the mall and bought me a 45 of it. We would listen to that song all the time.

Aged six, I sailed from South Africa to England by steam ship with my family. It was a three-week journey. I remember crying on my birthday when I didn't get the enormous teddy bear that was for sale in the ship's shop but, aside from that, I had a wonderful time.

I grew up watching 'Gigi.' My grandmother had it, and I watched it there.

I remember as a little kid watching the Opry from the nosebleeds, so to stand onstage and be invited to be a member was really, really cool.

We had poverty in our house. Even on the council estate I knew I was one of the poorer kids. I used to go round my friends houses on a Sunday to get their Sunday dinner because my mum couldn't cook either so I used to love going round my mates and say: 'Can you ask your Mum if I can come in for Sunday dinner?'

We had bills to pay. My dad wasn't working, and it was tough for my mom. People were always raising the rent, so I had to work, too. Everybody in the house worked to pay the rent.

We in New York were very poor in the depths of the Depression - but I must say, that was the best time of my life.

I grew up listening to country music with my dad on the way to school.

I remember being young in the backseat when my grandma would take me to school, and I would be literally singing and belting out Tina Turner at 3 years old.

So, when I was eight or nine my mom's friend gave her a big purple bag full of cassettes and I found Seals and Crofts' 'Summer Breeze'... When I found it I stopped going through the bag because I was like, well, I'm not going to find anything better than this. I just thought it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever heard.

Even when I was 3 or 4 years old, I'd go out riding in the car with mom and dad, and I already knew all the songs off mom's Hank Williams and George Jones records by heart. I remember just sitting in the back seat and singing them at the top of my lungs.

We lived in a hotel for many years as we struggled financially, but I always loved football.

Growing up, it was just me and my mom. I watched her struggle for 17 years, and when I was 19, I got a chance to pay off all of her debt after two paychecks. That's a crazy feeling.

Growing up, we were a poor yet tightknit family. My mother worked multiple jobs and always made sure that her kids never had to want for anything.

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.

We didn't have a whole lot of cash growing up. My mom was a single parent for a while before my stepdad came into the picture.

I was about 10 when I first began to sing. My mother had been away for three weeks, and I learned 'Don't Cry for Me Argentina.' When she came back, I sang it in front of her, my auntie Linda, my father, my uncle Jim, and my grandmother.

I used to sing Chaka Khan tunes in the car with my mum when I was eight years old.

My mother said I used to dance to all this radio music when I was a young kid.

Mum obviously did not earn much money to feed me and my siblings. She worked hard to raise us, but there was always something missing.