Part of why I started a band was due to feelings of shyness and social ineptitude. I saw it as some way of being able to interact with people from a safe distance.

As a shy kid growing up in Sheffield, I fantasized about how it would be great to be famous so I wouldn't actually have to talk to people and feel awkward. And of course, as we all know from fairy stories, when you achieve that ambition, you find out you don't want it.

I'd been thinking I'd have to learn how to play really well, but obviously the message of punk was that you just learn three chords in a week and you're away.

I am proud, and more than a little excited, to be asked to work with Faber in an editorial capacity. It is my dearest hope that we will produce some fantastic books together.

Noise is an easy thing to hide behind. If you make a lot of noise and shout behind that, nobody can tell what you're singing.

I think that's what all art is for - for people to express what it is to be human. That's the purpose of it.

I've stuck to the same things for twenty years. I try to look like a slightly edgy geography teacher. Like what a geography teacher looked like when I was in school. Cords, sensible shoes and glasses. I never liked geography much as a subject though. In fact the only geography teacher I can remember from school was a woman who had a moustache.