My mother, she didn't believe in praise. She'd never say anything was great. I think that's quite Northern, to not make people feel too good. I didn't mind if she was proud of me or not, it didn't bother me. I was never trying to please her.

I can remember when pants were pants. You wore them for twenty years, then you cut them down for pan scrubs. Or quilts.

Music enriches people's lives in the same way paintings and literature do. Everybody deserves that.

If you behave normally, people treat you normally. It's only when you act as if you're someone special that they feel obliged to stand on ceremony.

Radio killed variety and TV killed radio, and the internet will kill television and it will go on and on.

Of course I don't want to go to a cocktail party...If I wanted to stand around with a load of people I don't know eating bits of cold toast I can get caught shoplifting and go to Holloway [women's prison].

If God had meant them to be lifted and separated, He would have put one on each shoulder.