Once you lose that sense of wonder at being alive, you're pretty much on the way out.

This is a mad planet," David Bowie said in 1971. "It's doomed to madness.

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.

I just tried everything out - I mean, everything. Even my sexual orientation; I was just searching for what I really wanted. And I didn't quite know.

What I do is I write mainly about very personal and rather lonely feelings, and I explore them in a different way each time. You know, what I do is not terribly intellectual. I'm a pop singer for Christ's sake. As a person, I'm fairly uncomplicated.

I think fame itself is not a rewarding thing. The most you can say is that it gets you a seat in restaurants.

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.