TV legend Jonathan Ross has opened up about the emotional reason behind his jaw-dropping toy collection — admitting it stems from a childhood spent with barely enough to eat. The 64-year-old might be more used to asking the questions than answering them, but that didn't stop the dad of three from going into detail about his difficult upbringing and the reason for his huge toy collection.

Speaking on the Table Manners podcast with Jessie and Lennie Ware, Jonathan gave a rare glimpse into his early life, growing up in a working-class household with his late mum Martha, who was a familiar face on EastEnders as an extra for over two decades, and his father John.

'I come from a – I wouldn't say poor – but I guess we were poor. We were not a well-off family," Jonathan admitted. “When I was very young, we sometimes struggled with cash, so food would be borrowed from other people.” The beloved broadcaster revealed how he lost part of a finger as a toddler, after being left alone while his mother went to borrow food from a neighbour.

“You see my fingers are a weird shape?” he told listeners. “I cut my finger off when I was about one and a half because [my mum] had gone out to borrow food – we had no food in the house – and she'd left me."

Now a household name, Jonathan has made up for those hard times by amassing an estimated £30 million fortune. Some of this has been spent on what he describes as “probably the largest collection of a certain specific type of Japanese toy outside of Japan.”

Discussing how he got into collecting toys, he said: "Coming from a family with no money... I treated myself to the things that I felt a deep and simmering sense of entitlement to, that I didn't have when I was a kid." Touching on this, he recalled: “I wanted a Major Matt Mason. Instead, I had a tiny free giveaway of the Shell Petrolman and I made him a space suit out of paper, now I have every single Major Matt Mason you could possibly hope for, including several of the prototypes and original 1960s boxes they were displayed in in stores."

His toy obsession came to light on a special Antiques Roadshow episode last year, where the star unveiled a jaw-dropping room dedicated entirely to his collection. Host Fiona Bruce asked whether the towering trove of toys was healthy, to which Jonathan replied bluntly: “Obviously not, no, I’m, I’m aware that this is not healthy. However, look, Fiona, here’s the thing: the difference between a collector and a hoarder in my mind is a hoarder just saves everything any which way and can’t let anything go."

The father-of-three described the room as his “safe space”, adding, “A burden is lifted when I’m in there.”

Joined by his daughter Honey, 28, on the podcast, Jonathan also hinted that the famous Ross family Halloween bashes, once attended by dozens of celebrity guests, might be a thing of the past.

“We don’t have them anymore,” he confessed, saying the tradition started when he and wife Jane Goldman, 54, were inspired by American culture. Even before we had kids, we’d put something in the window and have trick-or-treats ready. When we had children, we were always a little disappointed at how few houses joined in,” he said.

To make up for it, the couple hosted epic garden parties, some with up to 80 children. “As my kids got older, I got more extravagant,” he laughed. “We did go crazy.”

Jonathan and Jane, who’ve been married since 1988, are also parents to daughters Betty Kitten, 33, and Honey, and son Harvey, 31.