The great thing about small children is they're portable, so we take them everywhere, but when it comes to 2015, Zachary's going to school, and I want to be there to drop him off and pick him up. I don't want to just be the father who reads them a bedtime story.

I love every minute of fatherhood, staying up all night, changing nappies, kids crying, I find it really funny and inspiring. It connects you to the world in a new way.

I'm very relaxed. I have a family, I have a partner of 20 years, I have a wonderful life; nothing could be better.

I've never had a writer's block, but still I think: 'Is it going to happen this time?' You never know what you're going to get; you just put your fingers on the keys and hope.

When people go to rehab and come out, they go through a difficult period, but I never had that.

For me, music is so passionate, I have to give it my all every time I go onstage. Onstage, it was always comfortable for me, because that's where I felt at home.

I think performers are all show-offs anyway, especially musicians. Unless you show off, you're not going to get noticed.

As a child, as a teenager, I was kind of not allowed to wear fashionable clothes.

I've never been jealous of anybody's success. I've been flummoxed by it because I don't understand it, but I'm not jealous of it.

I'm addicted to working. I mean, I have a list of 100 countries I want to play in. I'm basically killing myself by travelling so much, for no reason whatsoever.

I've always been dead set against festivals - really suspicious and wary.

I just go into the studio, look at the lyrics for the first time when I put them on the piano, and go. If I haven't got it within 40 minutes, I give up. It's never changed, the thrill has never gone, because I don't know what I'm going to get next.

If I was to say what I am, I'd be a Labour man. I like Tony Blair a lot, I think he's a good man. And in America I'd definitely be a Democrat; I'd never be a Republican.

I've always wanted to smash a guitar over someone's head. You just can't do that with a piano.

I was just genuinely shy. I'd always been a shy kid.

I went to a mixed school and I can't remember being bullied at school, ever. I was quite large, in those days. Usually, if you're going to be a bully, you'll pick on someone who is small. I didn't bully anybody, and I don't remember being bullied.

I grew up conservative because my mum was a conservative, and when I finally realized what conservatives were, I changed my mind immediately.

I loathe gardening, but I love gardens, and I have two beautiful gardens. I can not bear gardening, but I love gardens.

I grew up at my grandmother's house and she had a beautiful garden. I used to hate mowing the lawn and weeding, which is what you do when you're a kid.

Music has healing power. It has the ability to take people out of themselves for a few hours.

I love the idea of the teachings of Jesus Christ and the beautiful stories about it, which I loved in Sunday school and I collected all the little stickers and put them in my book. But the reality is that organised religion doesn't seem to work. It turns people into hateful lemmings and it's not really compassionate.

And there's no guarantee that if you get HIV and you take these triple therapies, or whatever comes along next, that they're going to be successful for you.

And the danger is - and it's happening - is we're seeing an incredibly big rise amongst young gay people, young heterosexual people as far as catching HIV, which is, you know, in an educated country like this or in Britain, it's frightening.

I never really made a full album in Los Angeles before.