I hate the bloody highways. I hate hamburgers, I hate Greyhound buses. I'd have liked to have been in America during the Jazz Age, or the Golden Age of Hollywood.

The most important thing to remember about drunks is that drunks are far more intelligent than non-drunks- they spend a lot of time talking in pubs, unlike workaholics who concentrate on their careers and ambitions, who never develop their higher spiritual values, who never explore the insides of their head like a drunk does.

There have been many happy days and many unhappy ones in my life, but the most important was the day I met my missus, who is sometimes estranged and sometimes not. She got me off smack - although that's not the main reason it's the happiest moment.

What I do is I'm a bandleader, frontman, entertainer.

There is drinking in lots of the songs because there is drinking in life. Drinking stimulates the imagination.

Everyone drinks..........Well, unless they don't.

I play Irish popular music, yeah? Calling it folk is like putting it in a box. It's a living tradition, you know?