I suspected my homosexuality, but I'd never acted out on it because I was afraid of sex. It's awful to be afraid of sex.

Fame attracts lunatics.

That's just a part of being an artist: you can't write great stuff all the time, because if you did, then you'd be inhuman. The human side of people is that sometimes they fail.

And now South Africa has finally woken up and it is doing great things. And if South Africa becomes the template to what AIDS is in the sub-Saharan continent, then all the other countries are going to follow suit. And Michel Sidibe, who spoke at the breakfast meeting this morning, was saying that there is so much hope for Africa now that South Africa has got its house in order.

Well, I'm a huge fan of Ryan Adams, who's from North Carolina. And he's beginning to break really quite big.

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.

I spent the last week of Ryan's life in Indiana, Indianapolis, with Jeanne and Andrea, Jeanne, his mother, Andrea, his sister, and some other beautiful people who came. And it taught me a lesson.