Strangely enough, when the Sugababes' 'Freak Like Me' went to number 1, which was built around my 'Are 'Friends' Electric' song, I had another song called 'Rip' go to number 1 in the Kerrang TV chart, so I was pulling new people in from very different areas of musical interest. That was quite an amazing week.

I'd been a Bowie fan before punk and used to get no end of trouble. I was always getting knocked about and having to run up the street, getting chased by people. It was horrible.

I worship nothing. Not a good lie nor a dark one. If nature is proof of God's amazing creation then I have truly seen the light, and the light is black. Nature is genius at its most cruel and savage. No benevolent God could have come up with such an outrage.

I'm very lucky in the sense that I've got a voice that's distinctive. Not good, but distinctive. That's a very useful thing to have in this business. I'm glad on the one hand that I've got it, but I wish it was more powerful. I wish I had a greater range. I wish it was more accurate at times.

If I thought that any of this was pre ordained, then it takes away any kind of incentive to struggle, or to put up with things, to reach for those impossible dreams, all those dramatic things.

And I used to go the punk clubs such as a gay club in Poland Street that everyone would go to because it was the only place you could go to looking like that without getting beaten senseless.

Ultravox were the blueprint for what I wanted to do, but I stumbled across them by accident.