When Culture Club broke up, I hadn't been going out a lot because we'd been working all the time, so I suddenly had this period of leisure. And it was just around the time that the whole acid house thing kicked off in London.

Don't talk about things you don't like. Talk about music that you love, books that you've read. I put a lot of recipes online.

[Arnold Schwarzenegger] is funny. Some great one-liners, some great banter between him and the contestants [on "The Apprentice" ]. And he's good!

I was about 16 when punk started to happen. It was so exciting. You had a social depression going on in the U.K. There was a sanitation strike. London was really grim, gray. You had Margaret Thatcher coming in. It was a really revolutionary time.

I like the big bombastic singers, but I'm also very drawn to what I call character singers. They're people who obviously aren't very huge singers, but they've got this ability to tell a story and touch you emotionally without really using any kind of histrionics or special effects.

Everything I think in life is about context and intention.

Beethoven had a great look. It was very much about the drama of appearance.