Relative Values: Dominic McVey and his mother, Valerie

When I look back now at why I should have had this kind of success, it's hard to put my finger on it. What I do know is that my childhood revolved around three things: problems at school, my parents' work and Mum's health. She had breast cancer when I was a kid, so her going in and out of hospital seemed to dominate a lot of my early years. Of course, being a child, I didn't really know then how bad things were and what cancer really meant. I think my parents protected me from a lot of that. And Mum herself was always such a positive person - that's just the way she is about everything. It was only when I was much older that I found out she nearly didn't make it.

At the time we were living in a small terraced house in Leytonstone in east London. Dad held down two jobs: he was a music teacher during the day and a musician for the Royal Shakespeare Company at night. He seemed to work all hours. And when Mum started to get better she had an evening job, too. I became very aware of how far they were stretching themselves, and even more so when they decided to send me to private school.

They could see I was bright and they wanted to give me the best start in life. The only problem was that I found school boring. Don't get me wrong: I had the ability to pick things up fast and I was interested in lots of subjects, but school didn't challenge me, it just didn't get the best out of me. As a result I was either a complete nuisance or didn't bother turning up. Dad got very frustrated. He was working round the clock and forking out all this money and I was wasting it.

But then, when I was 13, I was browsing on the internet and found these amazing micro-scooters by an American company called Razor. They weren't easily available here, so I knew straight away that if I bought a batch I could sell them to my friends, which meant I could make money. The only problem was they had to be imported from Arizona. Of course, being only 13, I didn't have my own credit card. So to get round that,

I secretly got hold of my dad's credit-card details to do the first transaction. He was actually away at the time and when I caved in and confessed all to Mum, she was not happy. But then I convinced her I'd worked it all out, that I couldn't lose, and in the end she agreed to let me go ahead and prove it.

I'll never forget the fact that Mum put her faith in me then, because it was a real turning point in my life. In no time at all, word got round my neighbourhood and orders started flying in. It was amazing. And that's when I knew I'd found something that gave me this huge buzz, that made me think and challenged me on so many levels. It wasn't about reading a load of textbooks, it was about street wisdom, instinct and getting out into the real world. I realised very quickly there was a huge market for these things, so I started handing out leaflets at stations and shopping centres. And I was bunking off school to do it - in fact, I was working day and night, but I didn't mind. I loved it. And it paid off. By the end of the first year, I was selling 20,000 plus a week. At its height I was shifting 300,000 a week. In total, I sold 11 million of them.

But by the time I was 15, my school had had enough of me not turning up and kicked me out. What can I say? I had more important things on my mind. Of course, the upshot of making money so quickly was that I started spending it. Mum and Dad had already set up trusts for me, but money was just coming in all the time. I can see now I went a bit crazy. I started blowing thousands a week at expensive bars and restaurants, partying every night, staying out all hours. Money buys you independence and I was having a blast.

At that point, I'm sure I wasn't the easiest teenager to live with. I no doubt tested Mum and Dad's patience. They'd see my statements, showing what I'd spent, and I'm sure it shocked them. Then they tried to stop me getting access to more of it, but I was so confident I just thought: "Right, I'll go out and make another million." And I did. In the end, to make things easier, I left home at 16 and ended up buying a flat in Mayfair - it was actually one John Lennon used to live in. Luckily, after about three years I started to calm down and reassess what I was doing.

I knew if I was going to utilise my position, my experience and all the other new ideas I had, I had to keep my head screwed on. And that's paid off. Right now I'm working in cosmetics and fashion and I've just acquired a publishing company called Kane, which includes the men's lifestyle magazine Front. I've also got a lot of property. In the last couple of years I'd say my net worth has increased, so these days I'm certainly worth over £10 million. But now, nothing makes me happier than knowing I can pamper Mum. I guess I just want to keep reminding her how special she is. At the end of the day, she's always been there for me, she's always had my best interests at heart. And I know that will never change.

VALERIE: Dominic was a surprise right from the word go. I was 40 when I found out I was pregnant. My husband, Tony, and I hadn't been expecting to have any more children - we already had a 12-year-old daughter, Chantelle, and we thought that was it. Of course, we couldn't have been happier, but I'd be lying if I said he wasn't exhausting. I must have aged 10 years in his first 10 months. By the age of one he was walking, and by two he was talking nonstop and questioning everything.

I remember sitting with him in the headmaster's room, being interviewed for a place at his first school, and he started picking his nose. He got this bogey and said to me: "What should I do with this?"

I said: "Dominic!" And he said: "If I wipe it on my trousers, you'll tell me off. If I eat it, you'll tell me off. If I put it under the table, you'll tell me off. So what do you want me to do?"

At school, he continued to be a challenge. He was either completely bored or so interested in a subject that teachers would be driven crazy with all his questions. With the computer classes, his teachers would say to me that they couldn't keep him occupied because he knew far more about the subject than they did. So we knew he was incredibly bright, but school and maybe a lot of the traditional teaching methods didn't bring out the best of him. We sent him to private school, thinking that would stretch him, but it didn't. It was tough, because my husband was working so hard to give him this privilege. But I felt torn. I didn't want to push him. A pushy parent creates an unhappy child.

In the end the school had enough of his absenteeism and kicked him out. We insisted he at least go back and sit some of the GCSEs, and he did. And the results were certainly a surprise for his school and us. His housemaster said to him: "Dominic, I haven't a clue how you passed these things, because I've only seen you in here three times this year."

But of course, by that time he'd set up his own company and was being called this teenage tycoon and Britain's youngest self-made millionaire. It's funny, because it's not like he came from a business family or had grown up in that kind of environment. It was purely him.

Looking back, I can see he had an awareness, not only about how people made money, but how he could make it. I remember when he was eight years old, we were on holiday in France and he said to me that French fireworks were much better than British ones, and that if we bought a load of them up, we could sell them back home and make a profit. So in that sense, when he told me he'd found a company on the internet selling scooters and could see a way of making a profit by selling them himself, I wasn't surprised.

The surprise was him confessing that he'd gone behind our backs with his father's credit card and already bought a first batch. But in the end, his conviction and enthusiasm was convincing; it was hard to hold him back. And then, of course, he proved himself right, and one order led to another - they just got bigger and bigger each time. And from the time of that first order, I can honestly say he'd found something that made him willingly work a hundred times harder than he'd ever worked at school.

The only problem was he was still so young, so I did worry about the consequences of all this new wealth. He loved making money and he loved spending it. He seemed to go through cars like shoes. I said to my husband: "Do you think he's had too much too soon?"

But he's matured a great deal in the last few years. He's got a much healthier attitude to money now. Sure, he still loves a fancy car and a good watch, but that's not what drives him - it's seeing how he can make a success of something. And in that sense, he's busier than ever. If anything, I'm worried he works too hard. When he finds something he believes in, that's it. He lives, eats and breathes it.

Dominic is away quite a lot with his work, and I always miss him. If I go to the airport with him, he always says: "Mum, promise me you won't cry." But, to be honest, it's hard not to. He's still only 24, still this warm, kind and incredibly lovable boy. And he's still just as much of a surprise in my life as he was at the very beginning.