Numbers are really fascinating things, and they do play a big part in our lives. They are a language of their own.

It's not that I don't like American pop; I'm a huge admirer of it, but I think my roots came from a very English and Irish base. Is it all sort of totally non-American sounding.

I just could not stand the idea of eating meat - I really do think that it has made me calmer.... People's general awareness is getting much better, even down to buying a pint of milk: the fact that the calves are actually killed so that the milk doesn't go to them but to us cannot really be right, and if you have seen a cow in a state of extreme distress because it cannot understand why its calf isn't by, it can make you think a lot.

What I've tended to do is to use my own experiences to get into someone else's mind, like in Wuthering Heights.

Bang goes another kanga on the bonnet of the van

I think I was just lucky to be brought up in a very musical family. My two older brothers were, and still are, very musical and very creative, and music was a big part of my life from a very young age, so it is quite natural for me to become involved in music in the way that I did.

In some ways, when you re-envision a song like that ["Never Be Mine"], there's a completely different energy to it each night.