What got you started?Coming out of hospital after an operation when I was five to find a piano in the living room. My parents had to beg me to stop practising. What was your big breakthrough?Forming Ensemble X in 1990 to perform my music. I wanted to give concerts I would like to go to myself. At our ...

Before I had T, ages before, I was badgering my best friend into coming for a fancy lunch with me and bringing her offspring, and she said no because her daughter was going through some well-documented phase (terrible twos? Untenable tens?) and her words were: "If she's not happy, I'm not happy." What a totally frightful state of ...