And it sort of jogged a memory of something that I read at school and I read it, and I thought God this is it. So you never can tell. I could find something this afternoon.

I often think of random melodies. And I pretty much hear in my head what I want to do with the orchestra as I'm writing on the piano.

What strikes me is that theres a very fine line between success and failure. Just one ingredient can make the difference.

When people ask me if musical theatre should be taught in music colleges, I reply that there is no need. All anyone needs to study is the second act of La Boheme because it is the most tightly constructed piece of musical theatre that there is. It is practically director-proof: you can't stage it badly because it just works too well. If you can write La Boheme, you can write anything. I would also recommend studying Britten's Peter Grimes.

I guess we've had a very close relationship because I don't pretend to know about cinema and I think I do know a bit about theatre but he does, he respected that and so we really just had a collaboration which went completely like this.

As a composer at a point where I can absolutely pick and choose what I want to do, I don't want to write about anybody I don't care about.

People in Britain always think of 'Jesus Christ Superstar' as a musical - it wasn't.