It's mostly Mars Bars and peanuts and cheese and you go to the fridge and there's Red Bull and Beer. It's not like people are holding me down and pouring beer in my face.

When Blur first started and we were playing Manchester the Hacienda was the place to go. That was where a lot of exciting stuff was happening and London was pretty dead.

It's the faster bands that made me want to play guitar, bands like The Jam.

With my daughter, who at the time was one, my domestic life needed to take more precedent and really with my own self I needed to develop quite a bit more. So that put Blur down the list of priorities quite a lot by the time I came to thinking about it.

Jack Daniels makes us all puke.

You know Manchester is always a bit of a hard place for people coming from London, just with all the history. Manchester has this immensely huge and healthy history musically.

I had a breakthrough, I think my life just became calmer, I gave up drinking. My priorities changed as I had a young daughter. The group didn't want me to record for the Think Tank album... so I took it as a sign to leave.