Nigella Lawson: all mothers feel like failures She told Radio Times: "I was really helped by a friend recently because I was thinking, "Oh, God, I'm not strict enough..." and this friend said to me, "Look, Nigella, you don't choose whether to be a strict mother or not, you really are what you are. It's not a decision."" Lawson, 52, said of her parenting style: "Although I'm pretty easygoing about most things, I do think manners are important, and being kind. And they make me laugh, and that's quite important. So I like the people they are. In addition to the children from her marriage to the late John Diamond, Lawson is stepmother to Phoebe, the teenage daughter of her second husband Charles Saatchi. The couple recently sold their Belgravia apartment for a reported £25 million and moved into a £12 million property in Chelsea. But Lawson said their home was far from pristine, joking that "Charles says I turn everything into a student doss house." Her own childhood as the daughter of Nigel Lawson, the former Chancellor, and the late Vanessa Salmon, heiress to the Lyons catering fortune, was less rosy. Salmon considered her daughter to be autistic and did little to boost her self-esteem, Lawson claimed. She said: "When I was 15, my mother said, "Stop being so self-centred! Who do you think is interested in you, anyway? It was her way of trying to help, but it made me even shyer. I certainly wasn't suited to being a child. Being young is very hard and sometimes the more you get away from your family and make your own life, the more you become your own person. The family script can be really unhelpful. The television chef returns to BBC Two later this month with Nigellissima, an Italian cookery series inspired by her gap year working as a chambermaid in Florence. She confessed: "We'd try on the guests" clothes and put their scent on. We'd never take anything, obviously, but we were nosy and it was very interesting.