101Pakistanis dot com

"I'm not a typical member of the House of Lords, I'm very much a peer of the people."
I'm from a working class background and I'm very proud of that. I got involved with the business twenty three years ago, and every little bit we have done as a family. I look back and I think, well that's a great achievement.
We started frying fish and chips in a village called Sunnyside. About fifteen or sixteen years ago we opened this shop in Rotherham town centre and I used to fry fish and chips myself. It's great!

I'm not a typical member of the House of Lords, very much a peer of the people.

I am very much in touch with people, very approachable. People have my telephone number, my mobile number gets printed in the newspapers.

People ring me up, they want to talk to me about their own issues. Sometimes they just have ideas about certain problems and they'll say ‘well I've got an idea about'... you know…drugs in Bradford or the problems that existed in Oldham.

People have rung me up and said 'Lord Ahmed could you raise it with the government...' Sometimes people say ‘you know next time you see Tony Blair will you tell him this', and they don't realise that I don't speak with Tony Blair on these type of issues. But I do write in, or if I see any of the Secretaries of State I talk to them.

As a British Muslim I feel that this multi-religious, multi-ethnic society has a great contribution to make in the world, because we have started this dialogue of civilisations here, and that dialogue of civilisations and understanding of each other's religion, each other's beliefs, can be extended to the rest of the world.