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.

We just kind saw the images and knew the cliches, so to have the opportunity to go there and learn something about Russian music and about Russian people and to see things apart from being a tourist.

I don't really have anything against Will Young or Gareth Gates.

I was very much a mess, as a person. I'd come from a very turbulent teenage life, with parents who had broken up in a very bad way, and a lot of illness at school.

That's what I like to do, I like to make songs.

The albums I did around that time probably wouldn't have been the same without Ecstacy. The first three Soft Cell albums... were all really albums that were just done around Ecstacy and the whole E feeling.

I love this idea of shape-shifting and changing when you put on clothes, and turn into somebody else.