If you have a live reputation and your popularity is proven that way, then you're bound to get signed up because they see all those people buying those tickets and they think some of those people will buy those records, and that's what their business is primarily about.

The idea of going around to somebody else's flat or house and sitting around in a comfy room and having a really good hi-fi system and listening to a whole album all the way through, then chatting for a few minutes, then maybe putting another album on . . . does that happen today?

The old ways still apply. You can still send tapes to record companies, and there are record companies, you know, there are one or two of the record companies do declare proudly that they listen to every single one that comes.

There's no way out of here.

Little ideas can pop into one's head at any time, and if I'm being reasonably efficient I've got it close enough to hand, then I pop that little tiny moment of a few seconds down onto a tape and then I can forget about it for... years sometimes.

I went to a school in Cambridge, which I thought was completely rotten. Yes, hated it. Now they want me to go back there and support this, that, and the other and I haven't managed to pluck up the courage to even face it yet.

How much in life is determined, and how much is due to chance?