I'm always aware of mortality.

I like situations that force me to rethink things.

Sometimes, with autobiographies, it turns into a bit of score-settling. And looking back, I don't feel the way I did then, and you kind of grow up and let it go behind you.

The weird thing was that Soft Cell was supposed to have come and gone before I started the album.

I was quite naïve, a boy from Southport. When I went to art college in Leeds, I lived in a basement flat, and I heard clunking on the stairs all night, and I thought it was just nurses going to work on the night shift at the local hospital! Then I found out it was all working girls upstairs. I suppose I came from a protected background and had my eyes opened wide by that side of city life.

I became the magnet for a lot of scary aggression. Cos it's scary Up North!

People come from all over the world to see this little place they've seen in movies and read about in history books: Soho.