This much I know: Francis Brennan, Hotelier and TV personality

I’ve always been industrious, even as a child. I was a bit of a young entrepreneur. I had an ability with money. 

I never cost my parents a penny from the time I was 10 years old. I was always coming up with schemes. One of my earliest successes, when I was 11, was taking logs, sticking holly in them and selling them as Christmas table decorations.

‘When I’m not working’ is a bad phrase, in my book, because I really do work a lot and take on countless projects, but I never complain. I just get on with it. One of the best pieces of advice I ever got was from my father — ‘if you enlist, you have to soldier’.