Actually, my ambition at eight or nine years old was to be one of Little Richard's sax players, and that's when I got my first saxophone, a Selmer. It was a strange Bakelite material - that creamy plastic with all the gold keys on it. I had to get a job as a butcher's delivery boy to start paying for it.

The best DJs in the world know how to pull in music from all over the place and make it work as a cohesive whole.

The Internet is merely a new means of communication, that's all it is. It serves the purpose of getting information, which it is fantastic at. I mean, I live by the Internet in terms of research and it's incredible - there's nothing that you can't find out about. It's not stopped me going to bookshops but I must say that I don't go into as many because any book I want.

Having not really written any generational songs - I think maybe two or three of the songs that I've ever written have any bearing on the age of the listener. My stuff tends to be far more concerned with the spiritual and with subjects like isolation and being miserable.

When I was going through those very fast changes, I think it was terribly important to me that I was seen to be inventive. I think that was the characteristic of my work that I wanted people to see.

Hear this Robert Zimmerman, I wrote a song for you, about a strange young man called Dylan with a voice like sand and glue.

I'm English. I can't accept happiness that easily. There's got to be a trick in there somewhere.