I write all the time, I've got a big, thick, old ledger book that I write stuff down in. I used to watch TV and write things that people would say and now I tend to get it more out of books and from conversations with people I meet.

As a person who has a pretty short attention span I think of music like that, completely. That's why I can quite happily change genres mid-song.

I grew up in the South Wales valleys, but I think my parents realised from quite an early age that if they hadn't sent me to boarding school I would have probably gone to prison. And it cost them absolutely everything.

I still love pop music, I still have a huge pop music collection, and I like that juxtaposition of styles.

It's the way I make music, I will take two ideas and smash them together and if they sit well together for me then that's fine, and it's the same with the lyrics - if I see a couple of lines and I like the way they look on the page then I'll use them. I find they take on a meaning of their own, it's very difficult to explain how I actually go about all that.

Obviously I can't rely on my group, but I don't want to rely on a laptop just to play back some backing tracks, that's not the way I do things really.

I'm not a great fan of people who suddenly manage to pull out the whole track sounding perfect from a laptop. That doesn't feel like any kind of show to me.