My parents were both singers, so we had a huge amount of music in the home: Gilbert and Sullivan, Joan Sutherland, Chopin Nocturnes, Harry Secombe… When I first started listening to music, I was very into Cat Stevens, James Taylor and Joni Mitchell, and those were huge influences on me because that’s how I became a singer. I played the guitar and when I was about 15 I started working in pubs – underage! – and acoustic venues, playing all that singer-songwriter music. And that’s remained – I still love that style of music.

Marina Prior, Music

I studied classical music and jazz at university as part of my music degree. It was at this time that I became a busker, and did some really eclectic stuff, singing things as diverse as Joni Mitchell, Elizabethan madrigals, Ella Fitzgerald and Kate Bush. I kept fluctuating between wanting to be an opera singer and wanting to be Kate Bush, or some...