This is a very fickle business. It's really about how much you value the other things in your life. I still value too many other things more than I do fame.

Still, the music was always there, and the lyrical capability was always threatening to show its head.

[My father] was not a musical man.

[Tabloids] could call you a child molester, I suppose, but they just go for the two things they think people are most likely to believe and that will most offend yourself and your popularity. My skin hardened to all that stuff years ago.

I think I'm getting there, but it's very hard to perform at my absolute peak when an awful lot of people come just to make their presence known, when the lights go down and all you can hear is people screaming.

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.

I can't believe that I've written my best work yet. If I believed that, then I wouldn't bother releasing music anymore.