I like to watch old films. Meet Me in St Louis, Cul-de-Sac and Buffalo 66 are some of my favourites.

Perhaps the people I choose to paint are often objects of derision - celebrity is a bit of a put-down term, isn't it? But to me they are my world.

I've lived on my own since I was 13 and not been to school and brought a son up who's now 18 and run theatre companies and bought a butcher's shop, learnt guitar by myself, taught myself to sing and that sort of stuff.

I will look through 200 photographs of Kate Moss and there will be just one that I connect with for some reason, maybe because of the composition or something in the eye... Something touches me and I know I have to paint it, in the way a child knows it wants something.

On Christmas Day I'll head off for a couple of laps around the Serpentine, or a trek around the whole of Hyde Park. Or I'll walk right across town, with Curtis, my son Jamie's bull mastiff.

Even in the most horrendous situations there is always something to smile about.

I like to watch old films. Meet Me in St Louis, Cul-de-Sac and Buffalo 66 are some of my favourites.