"An adopted child, Tunstall grew up in a house with no music. Her physicist father, who took the family on outward bound expeditions through the Scottish highlands, owned no records and only one tape: a comedy album by a mathematician from Harvard called Tom Lehrer. 'He would sing the table of elements in the style of Gilbert and Sullivan,' says Tunstall of Lehrer. 'Everyone at school would be dancing around to Marvin Gaye and all I could contribute were the songs of a comedy scientist'."