Toni Braxton

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.

Do I sometimes hope I wake up in the morning and people are like, 'What's wrong with her? She looks emaciated.' Of course I would love that. I'm such a clothes whore, I would love the opportunity to be a hanger. But I think I'm more confident than I've ever felt in my life.

I came to think that nobody from England could draw American comic books, because they were clearly all done by this sort of Mafia, all these guys with Italian and Irish names who had the whole thing sewn up. It was actually seeing a comic book drawn by Barry Smith, who was about my age, and English.

I've found that in now having experienced what it's like to make records and just through growing up in general that you should be expressive about what's affecting you instead of trying to sing about a subject just for the sake of other people getting something from it.