I grew up when the whole Motown thing was huge. The charts in those days were dominated by groups more than solo artists at one point.

Money brings you security and choice. You can make decisions in a different way if you have a lot of money. But when you have nothing, you have a naivety, and a more fearless attitude because you have nothing to lose.

I could just sit back and get someone to spin my achievements, I suppose, but when I see others do it, I always think, 'Why are you telling me how successful you are?' I am always suspicious of those kinds of boasts.

On one level, going bust didn't bother me. It was the 80s, and there wasn't the stigma about bankruptcy that you might think. My mates weren't bothered. My dad was in business.. he knew that it happened, too. He loaned me the money to bail me out, and I got a loan from the bank to pay him back.

I think of stress as the creator of cancer and heart attacks, like a tiny little ball you feed. I believe that one of the reasons I've never got ill is that I'm not stressed.

For the music business, social networking is brilliant. Just when you think it's doom and gloom and you have to spend millions of pounds on marketing and this and that, you have this amazing thing now called fan power. The whole world is linked through a laptop. It's amazing. And it's free. I love it. It's absolutely brilliant.

The secret of my success is that I make other people money. And, never, ever, be ashamed about trying to earn as much as possible for yourself, if the person you're working with is also making money. That's life!