We were the only black family in an estate with 1,000 white families. Liverpool being quite racist in the Sixties, it was a bit grim growing up.

Once journalists have been rifling through your dustbins, you do try and keep them at arms' length.

For me, everything has always been an accident.

It's evolve or die, really, you have to evolve, you have to move on otherwise it just becomes stagnant.

Critics called me 'egregious' - I had to look that one up - and 'creepy', but now I don't read them, I weigh them.

We were the only black family in an estate with 1,000 white families. Liverpool being quite racist in the Sixties, it was a bit grim growing up.

British fans are exceptional, but the American fans are something else. Some of them fly 500 miles to stand in line for three hours, just to meet me, then when they do they collapse.