Although becoming a singer was my plan A after first hearing Whitney Houston when I was 17 I started off with plan B by going to the teacher-training college that my dad went to. It was a slow coming of age.

Life is different than it was in the Nineties. I'm a dad and there are other things I have to get done in an afternoon than just being an artist.

Right now it hasn't affected my music other than the fact that I don't have time to write any of it. That's no different from when I first started and I lived at home. I would play the guitar in the afternoon and then my mom or my dad would come home and I'd have to quit.

I was a sickly baby and after two sets of adoptive parents took me home they returned me to the orphanage because of a serious respiratory infection. But as they say the third time's a charm because my mom and dad adopted me and took me into their home where I was raised in a family full of love.

I knew I really made it when my dad saw me in London and after the performance he had no notes to me and just said 'You are doing your own thing and I am proud of you.'

I did Albert Hall I got to play the Hall of Fame with Prince. So I've done that kind of stuff for ages. It wasn't until after we finished working on Brainwash my dad's album after he died then it was like 'That phase is over in my life now now we can get on with our music with our band.'

I found myself very lost after 'The Partridge Family ' and I lost my dad and I lost my manager and I lived in a bubble and it took me 15 years to get through that and a lot of psychotherapy and I'm laughing about it now!

I had my heart set on becoming an English teacher but stumbled into acting after meeting a theatrical agent in my dad's restaurant in San Diego.

I wanted to make a point of basing myself at home being close to my family. I'll never be able to repay Mum and Dad for what they did but at least they know they'll never have to work another day. I'll do whatever it takes to look after them.

My dad was a diplomat and after living in America where I was born he was posted to Cairo.

I was born in 1968 just eighteen months after my sister Chrisse and just one year after Dad passed the bar exam.

After graduating from flares and platforms in the early 1970s I started drama school wearing a pair of khaki dungarees with one of my Dad's Army shirts accessorised by a cat's basket doubling as a handbag. Very Lady Gaga.

My dad wanted to name me after Rainier Maria Rilke the poet.

I met Gemma my wife when she was 12. She had a schoolgirl crush on me and her dad had arranged for her to meet me. Later she started coming to my concerts but I only got to know her well after her mother died. I rang to see how she was and that's how it started.

I have one brother John an airline pilot who is seven years younger. He's adopted though we're still blood related - he's my cousin. My parents couldn't have any more children after me so when Dad's brother died they adopted John then just a baby.

My mom and dad met at Anaheim High School. After they got married all they wanted to do was have four children and they did.

My dad was in the army. World War II. He got his college education from the army. After World War II he became an insurance salesman. Really I didn't know my dad very well. He and my mother split up after the war. I was raised by my maternal grandmother and grandfather and by my mother.

My dad always used to tell me that if they challenge you to an after-school fight tell them you won't wait-you can kick their ass right now.

One afternoon when I was 9 my dad told me I'd be skipping school the next day. Then we drove 12 hours from Melbourne to Sydney for the Centenary Test a once-in-a-lifetime commemorative cricket match. It was great fun - especially for a kid who was a massive sports fan.

You know my dad served in the President's Cabinet after his time as a governor. He told me he enjoyed being governor a lot more. Now I understand why. If I do my job well I can make a difference in people's lives and I can help our children realize their dreams.

When I was 18 I thought my father was pretty dumb. After a while when I got to be 21 I was amazed to find out how much he'd learned in three years.

My father was not a failure. After all he was the father of a president of the United States.

But after this natural burst of indignation no man of sense courage or prudence will waste his time or his strength in retrospective reproaches or repinings.

The British were indeed very far superior to the Americans in every respect necessary to military operations except the revivified courage and resolution the result of sudden success after despair.