So often, the singer is the sound of the record. People think they can cover anything, but the whole voice is the thing that's unrepeatable.

If you were born by the sea, there's always a magnet that draws you back there.

Frank Sinatra said this great thing, that singing isn't about singing in tune, or great technical singing. It's about making people believe in the story you're telling.

That's the way I work and one day I won't have the energy to do it, so I think it's always good to make the most of your life and living as much as possible.

It's a shame in a way that people come and go with one album.

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.