I used to live with two other guys. We used to cook two things. The first one was called 'cheese... thing' and that was where you get something and you melt cheese over it and the first one to guess what it is doesn't have to wash up. That's obviously quite Mediterranean; the other one was less complex. It was just called 'cheese fantasy.' That's where you come in, very drunk, at about five in the morning and find an apple and just pretend there's some cheese on it.

Children are very overprotected now, in lots of ways. We're very nervous about them. You know, people go, "Don't go outside! Or inside! Get into the cupboard with some spinach!" When I was a child they'd kick you out and you weren't expected to come back until there were bats!

I've always wanted to visit [Washington]. The Smithsonian has some fantastic archival material on blues music, which I'm really into. There's a ton of stuff I want to do there. but it just never happened.

I was lucky in the sense that I was never blessed with an overly reflective nature.

Some people have told me that I'm grumpy; it's not something that I'm aware of. It's not like I walk around poking children in the eye... not very small ones, anyway.

Home gigs can be hard because it's an odd collision. More than anything, I feel self-conscious when my family are in the audience. I'm doing this job which is not quite acting - part of it is me, part performance. You're presenting a cartoon of yourself to people who know you as a line-drawing.

I just wish I had longer. It's very frustrating. As you know, to people over here, cities like [Washington] D.C. are iconic. We know them so well. It's very frustrating to be in one of them for 36 hours and have a show to do because you can't really do anything.