I was kind of reared by television, but the BBC, it still had that thing - and people are always invoking that kind of Reithian idea - where you could learn stuff from it. If you put a kid in front of a telly now to be reared by that you'd just have a jibbering idiot, you know what I mean? Just adverts for a start. It's almost like the programmes are an afterthought, the real business of this channel is to sell you things and we're just going to space out those announcements with some crap to watch.

In no way am I supporting or suggesting that a Conservative government is a good thing, far from it.

The working class has been turned into a consuming class - a situation has been created where people value their worth by what they can afford.

I think the credit crunch is a brilliant thing. We should all stop moaning and start celebrating. When times are tough, it's an opportunity to start looking at life in a different way.

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.

Paris is like a beautiful woman, but she's very haughty, she's not interested in you. She's very nice to look at but you can't quite get it together with her.

I always feel like there are specific things about Houston. There's one museum in particular in Houston. So many of the things that I'm interested in now I can sort of trace back to that museum, which introduced me to them.