None of us wanted to be the bass player. In our minds he was the fat guy who always played at the back.

Pete Ham in the group was a very good writer. He wrote the Nilsson song "Without You", which is a seriously good song. But the poor fellow topped himself. He was a lovely bloke, I can still see him now. It was a terrible loss.

When I sit down to write a song, it's a kind of improvisation, but I formalize it a bit to get it into the studio, and when I step up to a microphone, I have a vague idea of what I'm about to do.

I did study Shakespeare, that was sort of my thing; I got a Literature A-level, which is my only claim to academic fame.

My dad was a particularly polite kind of guy, very courteous. So when we got on a bus, he would always encourage me and my younger brother to get up and offer our seat to an old lady. I grew up kind of liking that, thinking, y'know, that's a nice thing, that's a courtesy.

I would quite like to have been a 1920s writer.

I guess the ultimate luxury professionally is to be able to change your direction, to work in another medium.