‘Everyone kept saying: “We haven’t seen Asians behave like this before”. We sold out by word-of-mouth before we’d even got to London’
My Pakistani father came over from India in the merchant navy, jumped ship in London in 1927 and moved to Manchester where he met my Irish/English mum, who worked as a clippie – a ticket-taker on the buses. They married in 1947, opened a chip shop in the slums of Salford, and had 10 children – eight boys and two girls. I’m eighth.
