You can cage the songbird, but you can't make her sing. And you can trap the free bird, but you'll have to clip her wings.

I used to get my money at the end of the week, buy my mum something, or buy a record, and that was it.

I love drag queens and I love going to see them perform because those people have got so much character and bravery. Such balls! I love people with balls.

We live in an age, in an era where there is so much negativity, there is so much violence in the world, there is so much unrest and people are at war, that I wanted to promote the word love and red signifies love.

I mean, Sting is one of my great buddies and I love him to death.

I've got to think about what I'm going to say very carefully. There's two avenues of thought: Do you stop everyone going, ban all the artists coming in from Russia? But then you're really leaving the men and women who are gay and suffering under the antigay laws in an isolated situation. As a gay man, I can't leave those people on their own without going over there and supporting them. I don't know what's going to happen, but I've got to go.

Well, as I was saying... everyone's so nice to me, usually.