I remember my father playing me Same Situation when I was a nipper, and saying how nobody since has done melodies as well as Joni Mitchell. I concur. The thing that most affected me was just her resonance, and that is something she must have been born with.

I get up, go and get a coffee, and go do the crossword - I'm loyal to one particular paper, the 'Guardian' - and that's my idea of a perfect morning.

It took a lot of time and practice for me to realise that there's no point trying to be something you're not.

No one starts playing my kind of music to make a fortune. But I do want to keep doing what I do and I do want to continue selling records. And I would, eventually, quite like some money.

I'm incredibly neurotic and a control freak. I like the thought that if there's going to be anyone to blame it's going to be me.

Rilke has a very bizarre relationship to women because his mother had an older child, a girl who died when she was a baby. So when Rilke was born she named him Sophie and dressed him as a girl until he was 7. And psychologically, the repercussions of that made him the genius that he is. By the time he was 35, he was continuously falling in love with older women, mother figures, spiritual mothers.

I made an important decision, which was to pursue happiness. Rather than accept unhappiness. That's why I'm here, and it's great. I'm in a very good place in my life.