You know, it's a very treatable disease. You shouldn't feel ashamed. But I'm afraid that's carried on very much so from the first days of AIDS, when it was basically a gay disease. And then, of course, you know, it affected everybody.

Onstage it was always comfortable for me because that's where I felt at home. Offstage it was a different situation. I was still shy offstage and unfortunately, my shyness and my inability to communicate and really have great conversations or be part of the gang - in inverted commas - led me to the drug addiction, which, you know, blighted my life for 16 years because I thought by doing that it would make me join in.

Laughing like children, living like lovers, rolling like thunder, under the covers, and I guess that's why they call it the blues.

I'm very relaxed. I'm very happy with my personal life.

He [george W. Bush] lived up - well, he was someone that I wouldn't have voted for. His policies were not mine.

I've been following him since Space Oddity. And I've followed him from all those albums that didn't sell, like The Man Who Sold The World and things like that. Above all, apart from all the glamorous rubbish, the music's there. Ziggy Stardust is a classic album.

I find that so many of my peers of my age don't listen to anything new. But I love the new. I love the energy of the new, the energy of the new act. The young are so important. The young give you the energy, and if you don't notice the young, and you don't give them credit and you don't listen to all sorts of music, then you're missing out on something.