It's been hard to gain acceptance in England without the clown makeup because I wore the costume as part of my act for so long.

Before I got married, I had a girlfriend who ran off in the middle of our relationship with a millionaire. She called from the South of France and said, 'I found one, I'm sorry. That's it. Goodbye!'

My hair is massive and fills the mirror.

I stand a lot better chance to go further than Elton.

There's nothing better than curling up with a good book and sitting in front of the fire on winter evenings.

I tend not to eat lunch because a midday meal makes me want to sleep in the afternoon.

Do you know what, I don't even like dancing.

I damaged my legs and ankles many years ago when doing concerts and falling off stage.

Being very dyslexic I couldn't even tie my own shoe laces until the age of 21 and I struggled at school.

When I was dressed as a clown in all that make-up I used to shed pounds every night and got agonising kidney stones because I was sweating so much.

There were people who went for serious mind enhancement, like Jimi Hendrix or John Lennon, although I didn't really need to do that. I was blessed with an incredibly fertile imagination.

I like my face. It's cheeky - dare I say, Chaplinesque.

I was never really keen to drive. I was always chauffeured around.

I'm impressed with Ed Sheeran. I think he has a terrific point of view and a great mentality but I sense there is someone in the background saying to him, 'We need more love songs, Ed.'

I've typical singer's jowls, a bit fat and soggy. If I was really vain, I would have a nip and tuck, but the knife isn't an exciting prospect.

In the past, it wasn't any big deal for people with talent to hang out together. Now we have the celebrity age, which has made a lot of things harder to do.

It's nice to feel wanted somewhere.

You don't necessarily have to write a song to make it your own. After all, Elvis never wrote a song in his life.

What keeps a good face is no stress, and I refuse to worry.

I have always preferred paper and ink to a computer screen and I still write most of my lyrics by hand.

Dancing as a thing to do is marvellous, but you've got to be bloody good at it. I was never good enough.

I remember showing Prince around Warners' recording studios. He was the nicest kid.

Everybody writes about love and cheating and heartbreak. We've done all that.

I'm quite intellectual. I read a lot and I'm very politically aware.

I particularly love the silk in Jakarta, the shoes in Tokyo and the amazing cloth from Thailand and Malaysia.

So many people moan about touring and say it's a chore. I don't know, they must be living on a different planet.

I'm not this cuddly, jumper-wearing, good-guy. I'm not David Cassidy. I'm more Johnny Rotten. I'm more Donny Tourette.

I think Bjork is sexy.

I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who don't like Robbie Williams but he is presented to the public in such a way that they have no choice.

I'm a very changeable character. I don't think I've got one style of music that is overriding to me.

I hate art as a be-all and an end-all.

Blissfully, I don't have the revenge gene.

After my second No. 1, my record company, Warner Brothers, gave me a beautiful present - quite unique at the time - one of the very first Sony stereos which had speaker and radio included so I could record the radio and build up cassette tapes of music, gospel singing, adverts, evangelists.

Wisdom is learned through experience, and sometimes experience is hard and bitter.

As a former Mod my love affair with fashion has never waned and whenever I go on tour I am always desperate to hit the shops as soon as possible.

I've found an extraordinary thing happens where I flash an entire finished song. I could be walking along, say over that bridge, and I see and hear the whole thing, words and music.

I grew up on the south coast in Shoreham-by-Sea in a three-bedroom semi-detached home with a large garden shared by two properties.

I'd much rather send my friends letters rather than emails.

Sometimes I feel like Leonard Cohen when he went off to become a Buddhist.

Marriage can feel like putting a burden on each other and sometimes kids go with that, too.

I would say that artists have to be good lovers.

I had to learn very quickly how to perform, how to act, how to look, to always say what I wanted to say in my songs.

I occasionally suffer from eczema but only very mildly.

I've always been a tilter of lances against authority.

I must have 300 songs unreleased or unrecorded, lying around. I'm a production machine, it never stops.

My mum came from an incredibly big family.

In the early Nineties, after my first round of financial problems, I started a studio in Kensal Road in London right at the time when no record company wanted to hear anything from Leo Sayer.

You can't get away from the right-wing politics but that's the same all over the world.

I'm not a golfing man.

The Seventies was a golden era. Back then we had some incredible talent with bands like the Undertones, the Rolling Stones and artists like Bob Dylan and Paul McCartney.