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.

My mum came from an incredibly big family.

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

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

I occasionally suffer from eczema but only very mildly.

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 would say that artists have to be good lovers.

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

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

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

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'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.

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.

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

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.

Blissfully, I don't have the revenge gene.

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

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

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 think Bjork is sexy.

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

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

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