My family values: George Alagiah
As a child, I felt cosseted. I had two older sisters looking after me and two younger sisters looking up to me. They might have worried that their brother was a bit girly: I don't know if I should admit this but I used to sew clothes for their Barbie dolls. I'm comfortable with women. I find the "men versus women" thing difficult to understand because I've never seen them as different. Apart from Frances, my wife, my sisters are my closest friends.
If I had three feet, I'd have them in Asia, Africa and Europe. Up to when I was six, we lived in Sri Lanka, then my father got a job for the government in Ghana. It was when legislative discrimination against the Tamils was beginning in Sri Lanka. Aged 11, I got sent to a Catholic boarding school in Portsmouth. And my sisters went to one in Littlehampton. We didn't live as a family much after that except for six weeks' holiday a year. We weren't rebellious. We understood the sacrifice my parents had made in sending us to school so we wanted to make those holidays the best they could be for our parents. And they would store up treats for us.
My parents were unconventional for Tamil parents – they married for love, educated all their children the same and gave us a lot of freedom – but there was still that strain of traditionalism. They set various benchmarks – and, one by one, had to let them go. If there was a time when they wanted us to marry Asians, that disappeared with my eldest sister's first marriage. Then they said Catholics. And my second sister married in a registry office. By the time it came to me, they just wanted good people. On my wife's side, somebody asked my father-in-law, who was a country lawyer: "Is this Ala-whatsit educated?". Our marriage was a shock to him but, to his credit, he replied, "That boy is more educated than you and I will ever be."
My father is an idealist so from him I've learned to dream. Through my work I've seen the world at its worst and I often wish I could make it better. My mother was the realist. There was a work ethic about my mother, which I've also inherited.
I respect the gentleness with which my dad nursed my mother before she died in 1996. He learned to bake cakes for the grandchildren and was really sweet with her.
My sons Adam and Matthew, who are 23 and 19, are amazing guys. If I were their age, I'd like to be their friend. The elder one is doing international development and I think Matthew could be a writer. We're in that transition period that other parents worry about: the loss of control and so on. But I cannot wait until they're the ones driving the car and I'm the one snoozing in the back. There is a Tamil proverb where a father waits for the day when he walks into a room and people say: this is So-and-So's father. The minute your children are the reference point, you know you've done your job.
I'd love to campaign to bring about the three-generational family, living in close proximity. You can't do that in a terraced house. What kind of architecture do we need? What financial arrangements? My dad is 85 and very frail; he lives in a wonderful residential home, but it's a 35-minute drive. I see him once a week and phone him every evening; my sisters see him every day. But wouldn't it be amazing if the kids could go across a hallway and do their homework with him?
George Alagiah reads the BBC Six O'Clock News