If you are pissing people off, you know you are doing something right

I love pop music. It's not easy to write a good pop song. It may be easier to put out a fake jazz album, as Sting does from time to time.

Over the years, during television interviews, whenever the host or the reviewer or whoever gets cynical and nasty with me, I will behave accordingly. I will defend myself.

I'm not great at dealing with death, I have to say. I find death very hard: my mum, my dad, Sid Vicious. I'm not a monster; I feel it and it scares me. One death at a time, please, is all my heart will bear.

My way of thinking as I approach any human being on this planet is, 'What are you doing now?' That's what interests me. I don't come at anybody with a whole bunch of assumptions.

I'm just permanently agitated by everything and everyone.

'Lollipop Opera' is the backdrop to Finsbury Park. A place that is very thriving, interracial and lot of music stores, Greek, Turkish, all sorts of immigrant music. It's utter Englishness. It blends the Jamaicans, the Irish. It's like what Jim Reeves did with American country music.