Where I came from in the country, there was no place to hear pop music like Little Richard and people like that. Later, I heard James Brown, Otis Redding, The Drifters, The Four Aces, The Ink Spots.

I was a little boy singing sad songs, about 9 or 10 years old in the woods. I listened to my voice coming back to me. It was as high as you could go. I dreamed of being famous as a singer when I was on those cotton fields. I wanted to see the world and meet people.

Guys like me and Ray Charles, when we was coming up through our days, country music and soul music was just a very thin line between the two.

As a kid, on the cotton fields, I had this tune in my head. I hummed it and sang it. It was the same melody as 'When A Man Loves A Woman.' I could never, ever forget it.

In terms of people that I know, my grandmother and my mother are huge influences on my writing life because they are both massively supportive and always have been of my career.

I immediately loved flying from my first flight and knew that in some way it was going to be a part of my future career!

Maybe if I was born in Kosovo, I might not be where I am now, so I need to thank Switzerland, of course, because I went to school there, learnt to play football there, and started my career there.

I didn't think, 'I'd really like to work in TV; maybe I could carve out a niche where I talk to people who are somehow involved in marginal or difficult lifestyles... ' It was something I gravitated to very naturally as a subject area, almost instinctively, and somehow turned into a TV career without meaning to.