My father was an air conditioning engineer and we lived in a three-bedroom terraced house in Langley before moving to a four-bedroom house in Maidenhead, where my parents still live.
Throughout my career, some of my best hires have been people who have bypassed the traditional route of university and learned their skills through apprenticeship schemes or alternative education courses.
One of the biggest reasons entrepreneurs don't succeed is because they have too many chiefs. You've got to bring in the right people to make the right decisions.
If I'm filming 'Dragons' Den', we work flat out until 8pm, although I love seeing the weird, wonderful and plain delusional.
If someone comes onto 'Dragons' Den' and annoys me, I'm going to tell them exactly what I think.
I think a lot of people are getting bored of audition-based shows, along the lines of 'Strictly Come Dancing' or 'The X-Factor'. I know I am. But 'Dragons' Den' will have a longer shelf-life than all of them because it's fundamentally real in a way that other shows aren't.
It was tennis that got me started in business. When I was 16 and about to embark on my A-levels, I set up a tennis academy and became one of the youngest qualified tennis coaches in the country. It did well; by the time I was 19 I was able to buy my first house.
When I was 12 I worked with someone - it was actually an English teacher at my school, John Woodward. He was the only teacher in the school to have a top-of-the-range Porsche and all the trappings of success, so it was very interesting for me to find out how he did it. He was probably the wealthiest English teacher in the community.
American Inventor', a show I came up with launched in 2006. It's all of America's greatest and wackiest inventions rolled into one with a judging panel including the legendary George Foreman.
I'm 6ft 7in and I was a bit like a giraffe on the tennis court, though I did play at county level.
Knowledge-based apprenticeships kickstart careers. Just look at British fashion designer Karen Millen, for example, who learned her craft through an apprenticeship scheme.
I passed my Lawn Tennis Association coaching exam, and I persuaded my local club to let me use a court after school and on Saturdays.
When I was eight, my parents saved up to send me to private school, but I found it so tough that I often escaped through the back fence to walk the four miles to my father's office in Windsor. I only lasted a few terms, but it didn't curb my ambition.
