Jeff and Jemma Wayne

What does happen is that you meet someone, you fall in love, and life takes its course. Your first child comes along and, basically, you go into shock. You sit down for dinner and you think that everything is normal and, all of a sudden, this child wakes up and starts crying — disturbing your life. But then you realise that this is life. This child is your life. After that, there was a second, a third, a fourth.

Like I say, it was just life taking its course.

None of them were “sleepers”, as we called them. For us, four hours’ sleep was a luxury — most of the time we’d get maybe two or three hours. I remember being so jealous of those parents who had sleepers. Geraldine would say to me: “Hey, why can’t we have some of that?” Jemma is our second child. From the youngest age, words fascinated her. She lived her life through writing and reading. When I first started taking piano lessons, I’m sure people noticed I had a talent for melody, but Jemma was so far ahead of me at that age.

She was making up her own stories before she went to school. And I’ve kept them all. Every one. When she was nine, she even wrote a letter to Margaret Thatcher. What really strikes you about it is the subject matter — she basically listed all the concerns she had about the world. It was such an innocent letter and yet so mature.

She started it by saying: “I know you won’t have time to respond to this letter because I’m only nine, but I do have some real concerns about what we’re doing to the world.” Funnily enough, she did get a reply. It wasn’t like Maggie came round for tea, but Jemma got a letter from someone
on her behalf saying they found her letter very moving as it was from someone so young. I was really proud of her.

The real problem for any parent who can see that their child has a passion for something is not to spoil that passion. So many parents get too overbearing and end up trying to live their lives through their children, but I always fought against that. All I have ever said to my children is: “Follow your heart. Go for it.”

Every Friday night we used to sit down at the table and have big discussions about life. My wife would always be the practical one and tell the kids: “Get yourself a proper career. Get yourself a profession. Something that’s solid and something you can build on.” Me, I’m the musician. I’m the dreamer. The way I see life is that it’s not a rehearsal.

You only get one chance and you soon realise that it’s hard to achieve anything in this world, so you might as well put all that hard work
into something that you love.

When Anna-Marie left home, she started joking with me that I was a total wuss — okay, I did cry in the car as we were taking her stuff to college.

With Jemma, I tried to confront her leaving with a bit more fortitude, but I don’t know how successful I was. Even with four children, one less in the house makes a difference, because a quarter of the noise disappears overnight. And all that noise is the emotion of the house. That’s how you
know people live there.

My dad gave Jemma one of those old-fashioned manual typewriters for her birthday, and I loved to hear her typing in the bedroom. It was such a wonderful sound. I was thinking about that typewriter recently, when Jemma had the launch party for her book. There she was — surrounded by about 200 people — and she gave this incredible speech.

I always knew she was an achiever, but it still filled me with joy to be in that room. It’s an image that is for ever burnt into my memory. I just turned to Geraldine and said: “Hey, that’s our little girl!”

JEMMA: I’m not just saying this because I’ve got a book out, but my first memories really were of Mum and Dad reading me stories when I went to bed. What was wonderful about these stories was that they allowed me to create whole new worlds in my head — fairy-tale worlds. My sister and I were always in fairyland. Unfortunately, she’s a year and a half older than me, so she always got to be the princess and I was always left with the duff role, like the footman.

We grew up with this huge garden in the country which, looking back, must have been pretty idyllic — just creating our own world out there in the trees. I guess you couldn’t do that today because it’s not safe. I even remember things changing when my youngest brother came along. He’s so much younger than the rest of us and we were all more safety-conscious if he was playing in the garden.

My grandpa had books published, so it didn’t seem too strange for me to start making up stories. And my family and friends were always so encouraging that I naturally started to believe it was something I could do — writing books. I remember Grandpa saying to me when I was about seven: “Jemma, aren’t you getting a bit old? Shouldn’t you have your first book out by now?” I knew he was joking, but I also knew he believed in me. I think it helped that there was all this creative energy in the house.

My dad was doing his music and there were always musicians around. Of course, I had no idea that people like David Essex or Justin Hayward were famous — they were just Dad’s friends. Actually, I don’t think I had any real idea about how famous my dad was. Obviously I knew he made a lot of money, and we were lucky to have a nice house, but I think I was
a bit embarrassed by that. Some of my friends used to say: “This is Jemma. Her dad’s really famous and they have their own tennis court.” I hated that.

To be honest, Dad’s always been very sceptical about the fame thing, but that doesn’t surprise me. He’s a very sceptical man, always questioning, always probing. Both his parents came from very Jewish families, so he grew up with that culture, but he would never just accept something without a long debate.

Being Jewish, Friday nights were when we’d get together round the table and have these incredible discussions. What is God? How do you become a good person? Both Dad and I are very strong-willed people, so we would often clash. We love each other like crazy, but we also love a challenge — so no matter what we said to each other, we would always have to disagree. A lot of the time, he was just winding me up, and we would start laughing. But because he’s so good at asking those difficult questions, it makes him a brilliant sounding board. When I was thinking about a career, he casually said: “What are you going to do about the book?”

He’s like my conscience — always prodding away in the background. I think the most important thing I’ve ever learnt from Dad has been self-discipline — the idea that if you want something out of life then you have to work hard, and you have to believe in yourself. Because he always had his studio at the house, I’ve been able to see how much effort he’s put into his music. Dad’s never been somebody who looks at the world through rose-tinted spectacles. Yes, he has dreams, but he knows that you have to be focused to make them come true.

Look at The War of the Worlds: he invested his life savings in that project. If it had failed, Mum and Dad would have lost everything. Now that I’m writing, it’s my dad’s spirit that’s with me at the computer, pushing me to put in that extra hour’s work. When I started, I had days where I’d think: “Oh well, I don’t feel very inspired. I’m not in the right mood. I think I’ll have a day off.” But then I would think about my dad and how he used to go into the studio day after day until he’d finished what he was working on.

There are very few days when you feel in “the right mood”, but if you want to get anything out of life, you have to keep sitting there until you are.