Certain punk bands were influential because I thought, If they can do that then I can .Hanging around those bands was how I started my first band - In Praise of Lemmings.

I was about 16 when punk started to happen... It felt like you had this naive idea that you could change things just by wearing something.

Part of me looks at the gay movement now and worries that we're losing our individuality.

Leigh Bowery created outfits that made him look deformed, which was very brave. I believe this was the main thing that gave Leigh his edge. His designs were often breath-taking, but it was the way he used his body that was so utterly new and refreshing.

[Arnold Schwarzenegger] is really good at ['The New Celebrity Apprentice' show]. Totally different energy to our potential president, but he's cool.

What happened during the previews of 'Taboo' [musical] was that it was the first time I'd ever been written about as a great song-writer - I cried. I absolutely wept, because it wasn't the usual stuff like, "Oh, he was a drug addict and he did this and that..." It was really looking at the music and it was really complimentary. It was a huge thing.

The Taboo scene was a kind of deconstructed version of the New Romantics. The Taboo crowd was using a lot of the visual ideas that had already been used. I remember the first time I spotted Leigh Bowery and Trojan parading around in clubs: They were in their "Pakis from Outer Space" look, and the makeup was quite similar to one of my old looks, because I was quite fond of wearing blue, green, or yellow foundation, and so I was pretty dismissive of them at first.