'It was that classic thing,' laughs a flu-ridden Pui Fan Lee, the gamine presenter of the BBC's globally televised children's channel, CBeebies: 'My parents arrived in Britain to seek their fortune in the 1960s, running a Chinese takeaway.' She pauses to sip ruefully from a mug of hot chocolate. 'The weather was miserable, like today. My mum didn't understand a thing and my dad's family were fishermen from Tai Po ... I don't know how they survived.'
We are ensconced in a cafe near the north London home Lee shares with her Anglo-Bengali partner and their seven-year-old son. Beyond the window is a vibrant neighbourhood where churches, mosques and synagogues meld in the falling snow. Good schools, restaurants and a community theatre all lie within walking distance.
Lee happily describes the carefree life led by her little boy in this corner of cosmopolitan, contemporary Britain, where playmates are impervious to skin colour and good friends 'sustain the nuclear family'. But for someone who brings so much pleasure to children, she reflects on her own childhood with apparent sadness.
Born in Birmingham, the youngest of four siblings, the young Pui felt 'a huge generational and cultural gap' with her parents.
'I think by the time they got to me, they were exhausted,' she says. 'As a result, I rebuffed everything that was Chinese.'
School in Nottingham was hardly a panacea. Hers was one of the few non-white faces and she describes suffering the prejudice typical of British playgrounds in the 70s.
Drama gave the budding actress an outlet to discover herself. At 13, she joined an ensemble sponsored by a television company.