As long as my body holds out, I'll be grooving when I'm 70, and not some sort of horrible spectacle.

"I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day," which I actually recorded on "Quality Street" because I don't think anyone has ever covered it before. You hear it every single Christmas, and it is a great record. That's by Wizzard. It is a really great record, but I don't think anyone's ever covered it before, so I had to go it doing it differently. It's quite different from how the original goes.

Later in life, suddenly, if you're an outsider, it's something to be celebrated, I think, rather than getting on people's nerves.

The number of contemporary artists who appeal to me is infinitesimal.

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.

Be a military flier or be in a band; those were the two hippest things I could imagine.

And religious music and the sort of symbolism of it and everything. But I had this idea. Actually, I sort of dreamt it. I woke up - just before waking up one morning, I sort of dreamt this song or the idea of it and the first little bit of it. And I jumped out of bed and I thought, well, you're still asleep. You're going to forget this in a minute - you know, like you do when you've had a dream.