I go straight in very close to people and I do that because it's the only way you can get the picture. You go right up to them. Even now, I don't find it easy. I don't announce it. I pretend to be focusing elsewhere. If you take someone's photograph it is very difficult not to look at them just after. But it's the one thing that gives the game away. I don't try and hide what I'm doing - that would be folly.

Most of the photographs people take with their cameraphones are of little value in terms of documentary.

I looked around at what my colleagues were doing, and asked myself, 'What relationship has it with what's going on?' I found there was a great distortion of contemporary life. Photographers were interested only in certain things. A visually interesting place, people who were either very rich or very poor, and nostalgia.

Photographs are interpretations of reality; as such, it is entirely subjective. Most photos are taken with an agenda, to sell something or to make a subject look better than it really is. Think of family snapshots - everyone is smiling and happy.

I am not as cross about Thatcher now as I was in the 80s. Begrudgingly, I can see that some of her policies helped modernise Britain.

In 1982 I bought the newly released Makina Plaubel 55mm fixed-lens camera. With this shift from 35mm to 6 x 7, I also changed from black and white to color. Later that year, I started my project on New Brighton called The Last Resort. However, the first project I shot in colour was composed of urban scenes from Liverpool. This image was on the second roll of film. It's the first good photo I made in this new chapter of my work.

I am away so much, so I rarely see live TV, but I use iPlayer to catch programmes.