I left school at 17 and was a star by the time I was 18 - in certain parts of the world anyway.

I find it difficult enough as it is to keep some kind of normality in my life. I enjoy this experience, but I don't know where I'm going to take my career.

I think the media is a real demon.

It's an incredibly limited sphere those tabloids have, isn't it? Basically, they can accuse people of being gay and they can accuse people of taking drugs, but they can't get any more sensational without entering into the realm of incredibly bad taste.

I don't really feel I deserve something if I haven't had to fight for it. It's not a conscious attitude, and it's stupid and wrong. Sometimes you do deserve things without having to put yourself through agony.

I want to make a pop album - something more upbeat than my stuff was in the '90s.

We [with Andrew Ridgeley] didn't expect people to take it seriously. But naturally they did, and they thought we were a couple of wankers.