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.

The way the business things work in Russia is you have to meet people, you have to go through a certain amount of etiquette and business things are done just simply by a shake of the hand and whether they like you or not.

I think there's always been singers like that and i've done my fair share of cheese as well.

What was great about the 80s was that you still had record companies who would get behind developing you as an artist. You had these bonkers heads of department and A&R people who, even after a flop album, would let you make another one.

You can't keep pursuing pop success, and chasing the past.

I mean whatever I do it's important that I put my stamp on it and keep it in my world, whether I'm doing a dance track or something like the Russian album for example.

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.