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.

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.

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.

The things in my songs are the edited highlights of my life. I don't go seeking out strange sexual experiences every day of the week.

People who make good music aren't necessarily nice people.

You try and imagine what it must have been like to first see something moving on a screen. It must have blown your mind, because up to then life went by and there was no way to capture it. You could only get one instant and you didn't get the movement. So it's like having a bit of control over time really, because it's happening in real time or what seems to be real time, and then you can play it backwards and you can watch things again and again.

Every woman I've had a relationship with has found this maddening; the fact that I will talk about anything on the stage, and reveal all this stuff, and yet when I'm at home, I clam up and won't discuss anything intimate or personal.