First thing

I generally feel pretty grim in the mornings, but I am still good at getting up early - six o'clock, on most days. There are about three bashes of the snooze button on the bedside alarm first, though. I don't close my curtains at night, so that I can tell what the day is like as soon as I wake, but my first thought tends to be "Where's my cup of tea?" - which my wife Jay very kindly gets up and makes for me. I'm not a modern man first thing in the morning.

We sleep in a 6ft-wide bed, with two very blackly humorous Ralph Steadman originals hung above it. There's a walk-in shower in the bedroom, and a basin, and two large mirrors. We also have a big marble horse, and some antique whips lying on the windowsill - which I collect, but don't use, in case you were wondering. There are also some clubs lying around, as I have this paranoid obsession that someone's going to break in.

We've four loos in our house, and I am careful to go to one that won't disturb my son, Toby Jack, who's just over a year old, or the au pair, Lizzie, as they are still sleeping at this time. Then I go back to the bedroom to have a real high-pressure pounding under the shower, which is really the only thing that will get me going in a morning.

By this time my tea has usually appeared by the side of the bed. I drink that and then pick out the clothes I'm going to wear. I usually go for a sports jacket, with a shirt or T-shirt underneath. I always have to put my socks on first, though, for some reason.

Eating is an afterthought quite often. If I do have breakfast, it tends to be a glass of freshly crushed carrot juice, from our wonderful centrifugal juicer, to which I might add a hint of ginger, or a stick of celery, or some apple. This keeps the free radicals from roaming around your body, I find. If I'm feeling really healthy, I might also have some mango, with fresh lime squeezed on it.

I always like to see what Penny Smith is looking like on GMTV, as she's a friend of mine - and she looks like a peach usually. I also like to observe the body language between Anthea and Eamonn. I'll then walk Trevor, our dog, but he's new and I don't know how long the novelty of that will last. We also have a cat called Nigel, and three pot-bellied pigs - when I see them in the morning I often get a craving for bacon sandwiches.

Before I leave the house, at just before seven o'clock, I see my son: he has a bottle at this time, and then goes back to bed until about nine. My wife drives me to Reading station, where I get onto a Great Western train. It takes me 23 minutes to get into London, less time than it takes my secretary to get in from Battersea.

On the train I have some more tea, but I decline the biscuits they offer. Great Western also offer their passengers a free Daily Telegraph, though I'm not a Telegraph reader; I tend to go for The Times or the Mail. It's a good service, generally: the ticket inspectors brighten your day, and those trolley dollies they have now are very pleasant, too. But other commuters annoy me: I can't understand why they never talk to one another.

I get a cab from Paddington to my office in Frith Street in Soho, where I arrive at about 7.50am. I'll then have another cup of tea - a builder's tea this time, in a half-pint glass mug. I spend the rest of the morning going round to see restaurant units, or doing stuff for the Carlton Food Network, with which I'm now involved. I try to get my secretary to get me 8am or 8.30 business appointments, because I like to get things out of the way early in the day. It upsets my suppliers, but it tends to give me the upper hand.