It strikes me as being morally repulsive and intellectually absurd that people die of want in a world of surplus.

Music is what I must do, business is what I need to do and politics is what I have to do

You can't trust politicians. It doesn't matter who makes a political speech. It's all lies - and it applies to any rock star who wants to make a political speech as well.

It's a tragedy that modernity has released this Ebola beast into the world. It renders humans untouchable, and that's sickening. The international response so far has been scandalous. China has delivered f**k all.

We're looking at the singular condition of poverty. All the other individual problems spring from that condition... doesn't matter if it's death, aid, trade, AIDS, famine, instability, governance, corruption or war. All of that is poverty. Our problem is that everybody tries to heal each of the individual aspects of poverty, not poverty itself.

90% of the divorces are initiated by women. That is really odd. Why? What's going on? What's the great discontent at the heart of it?

I'd always thought the Rats were good fun, but one of the very nice things about being of Saga age is that I can actually look back and think, When I was younger I was in a great band. It was always a collective thing.