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I was then raised in 1970s Skelmersdale – a small town in West Lancashire – where my parents took their first medical practice. This was an entirely white, working class area and it is not an unusual tale of the 1970s immigrant that some of my earliest memories were of being firebombed, of bricks being thrown through our windows and stones aimed at us on the way to school. We had little to offer. We were not cool. We were not rich. It was actually the thing that came most naturally to us that became our saviour – it was our love for hospitality and our open kitchen that became the Kofi Annan of race relations. My mother’s generous and gorgeous rolling buffet meant our little Skem home became the place for teens to hang out. Their parents followed and my dad strode through acres of Johnnie Walker Black Label on the swaying road to integration. He didn’t complain, I promise you.