You want to sing this song. And so it goes on until eventually, after - well, however long it can take - sometimes a few days, sometimes months - you piece the whole thing together.

When somebody like Elvis Costello comes along, anybody can make a good record with him.

If anyone comes along, I'm more than happy to welcome them, but I'm not interested in world domination.

I've always felt quite like an outsider. I don't really belong in the mainstream, and I quite like that.

"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.

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 felt that in order to do what I wanted to do, I had to do certain things, and one of them was to have a hit in my own right. At least one.