Do you think I'm going to live until 100? I'll have to, maybe Bono can arrange that. That would be interesting. Hey Bono, thank you for my 50th, can you make me live another 50 years? It's just such a pleasure to be and an honor.

I have shot myself in the foot so many times, I'm crippled. Look, I am not exactly Mr. Great Career Guy. I shoot actually what I think. In a weird way, I used to think that was really messed up. Now I think it's okay. Mistakes, once you don't repeat the same mistakes, have no regrets. Live and learn. We mess up, so what. But know why you messed up and don't make the same mistake.

My real name isn't Gavin. I was given Gavin Friday by my friends. I'm christened Fionan Hanvey, which is Gaelic and there is no actual English translation. I hated it as a kid but as I grew up I sort of went, "Now I like it."

My main influences - I loved art. I sounds a little pretentious to say I was into art but I liked drawing. I liked music; music was my outlet from day one. I was giving you an image of Ireland being this dull, grey, massive unemployment, not much going on and the future was the dull queue or - and, for me, the window of hope was music and books. So I fell in love with sort of T-Rex and David Bowie very young. They sort of said, "Hey. You don't have to live in this north side of Dublin that's all grey and depressed. You can be a spider and go to Mars."

I've always as a performer on stage tend to sort of throw myself into the character, whatever I've written about, so it depends on how I'm writing or what I'm writing about.

I'm actually quite modest. All I want is a nice car. All I want is a drink at midnight on Sunday night and I'll be a very happy man.

The Catholic church had a huge profound influence on me in that as you get older you realize that you can't blame everything; that there is good and bad, and things get misdirected. So I would call myself a black Catholic. I still have this attraction to it because all religions I'm not a fan of. I'm a fan of sort of belief in spirituality. So I would be into Christ rather than the Catholics.