To make a full-blooded puff pastry, you need time, you need patience, and you need precision. It's all about the lamination: it's all about building up the layers of butter, dough, butter, dough; as the butter melts, it creates steam, and that brings up the layers of the two doughs apart from each other, and that's what gives it the rise.

Years ago, I saw a job for head baker for The Dorchester Hotel in London, and I didn't want to move away from the North West. But then I thought, 'I've got to do this for my career,' because I was very ambitious. So I went for it and got the job.

I find dealing with tempered chocolate a bit tricky, but that's a chocolatier's job. So I dabble, but I wouldn't profess to be good at it.

My first job at the bakery was jamming doughnuts.

I studied Japanese language and culture in college and graduate school, and afterward went to work in Tokyo, where I met a young man whose father was a famous businessman and whose mother was a geisha. He and I never discussed his parentage, which was an open secret, but it fascinated me.

Whenever I have a little time off, I try to go back to my farm in South Africa. I'll spend time with my family and hunt antelope, kudu and springbok. During a 2010 hunting trip, I tore some ligaments in my ankle when I stepped in a hole.

The shopping centres that have come up in Noida are amazing. There are amusement parks and other good family outing spots.

A Streetcar Named Desire' is one of the best, if not the best, modern American plays. It deals with family dynamics, mental health, PTSD, war, and love. It's hard to beat.