I was a very shy child. I didn't like football. I didn't like the usual stuff that was shoved at. Sports were always down you and the Gaelic language, which I've actually disliked as a kid but as I grow up I quite like it.

We became friends in Dublin through music and we had real names, Fionan Hanvey and Derek Rowan - what a dreadful name. And Paul Hewson. We gave each other nicknames just the way most kids do, but the nicknames had more to do with how we physically looked or our essence and I had quite square features as a young kid. I was called Wavin for awhile, but I'm a bit softer - I'm a little softer than a surge pipe so they changed that to Gavin. I didn't chose it, it was Bono and Guggi who gave it to me.

I really disliked the fact that our Irish culture is what make us and made us and will make us. And when money came in, we rejected it so quickly. Not even rejected, we didn't think. We just got lazy and all the girls started getting fat and that's not good is it.

I was into David Bowie. I attracted long hair and earrings when it was quite a risque thing to do in Dublin. We didn't have the liberation that America and Britain in the '60s but I did always look to England and America, mainly because of the music that came from there.

Our language was even taken from us. The Irish Gaelic language was outlawed and the religion was outlawed. Hence the religion later being stronger; stronger to a negative point of view. But our venge was, I mean if you listen to Irish language, it's very complicated but it's very poetic.

One of the biggest problems I found with Irish politics and the economic thing was after the war, after World War II, most of the European countries started to develop economically and socially, but whatever way the Catholic church they took a grip and they almost governed the country. I mean, we were almost like a dictatorship. There is good and bad, but we experienced an awful lot of bad, especially from the institutions that taught children the Christian brothers, etc.

And if you listen to Irish music, they say that kilts came from the middle east. So really I'm an Arab. If you listen to the way someone like Sinead O'Connor sang. It could be Muslim. You know that angst that sort of ****. That wail. I think it's in our genes. I think certain stuff is in our genes, like nobody can dance like a black guy. It's in their genes. So we don't have oil, but we have poetry.