When I was paralysed by polio at 13, I went into an isolation hospital and couldn't sit up, so I only took liquid food from spouted cups which the masked nurses would bring in and feed to me. I saw my parents only through glass; we couldn't touch.

Dad thought something very fishy was going on when, at 22, I was offered a job for £1,000 a year - more than Dad paid his own staff - for inventing cheese recipes and writing leaflets at the Dutch Dairy Bureau in London.

At 17, I went away to Pau in the south of France for a few months to study domestic science - including cleaning windows with newspaper and water - while living with a Catholic family with 10 children.

Mary Berry Quotes