I have a long history with Soho: even when I was at art college, I came down to Soho to work in the summer.
Soho has got to be at its centre. It's got such a history for rock, pop, poetry, jazz, writers, all those things, and I think it should be valued as such, and protected as this centre for bohemia.
I don't really have anything against Will Young or Gareth Gates.
Maybe I was a bit harsh on some people. But I was harshest on myself, really.
I became the magnet for a lot of scary aggression. Cos it's scary Up North!
A lot of the early songs I wrote were about the experience of going to London and meeting rent boys and transvestites and drag queens. A lot of my early material is that: the wide-eyed adventures of a middle-class boy.