I've been lucky that I haven't encountered much adversity growing up in London and having friends from all different backgrounds.

I could keep McQuiston, but growing up it was a hard-work surname. Everyone would always ask me to spell it or just get it wrong. I could call myself Emma Weymouth, or maybe I should take the family name and become Emma Thynn.

I've always, always wanted to present my own food show - one that includes a little bit of lifestyle, too. That's my ultimate goal.

I have long held the ambition of my own TV chef programme.

So much of my work is about children and/or parenting; it's something I'm drawn to without being able to completely articulate why.

Parents must not only have certain ways of guiding by prohibition and permission, they must also be able to represent to the child a deep, almost somatic conviction that there is meaning in what they are doing.

Now I want to use money in a good way. I make foundations back home in Russia, I have sponsored vaccinations for more than one million children in my homeland and I have founded scholarships in the names of my great Russian compatriots - Oistrakh, Richter, Gilels, Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Schnittke.

If there's one thing that 'No Child Left Behind' has proven, it's that more academics don't make for smarter children - or even higher test scores. And yet we somehow refuse to accept this reality.