I'm still kind of a hapless character in my everyday life. But when it comes to the writing, my influences are very old influences. I love American music of absolutely all stripes, including show tunes, advertising jingles, theme tunes from quiz shows, all kinds of American music.

I suppose I was waiting until I was old enough to have some sort of experience to sing about. When you're young, it's hard to sing the blues. Nobody believes you.

It's like a little folk song. I think it might've been Harry Belafonte or someone like that who did it. And "Merry Christmas, Everybody" by Slade, which is a rock group - a rock-pop group who are very big over there.

But anyway, I was convinced that it would go away, you know. But the idea was that he was sitting on a flight - you know, one of those sort of fairly long flights, like, sort of, you know, Newark to Denver or something like that - so, you know, a few hours.

There's really never any sort of master plan. I find if I've got a couple of tunes that I think are possibilities, I phone everyone up and get them into the studio and we'll have a go at recording them.

These days, rock 'n' roll is much more about rock than about roll. I don't do rock. But I'm interested in that roll part, because that's the funny little bit that makes it hip.

When I find a cover song that I like, I'll work away at it until I kind of believe that I wrote it.