At school there was an annual school disco and I'd be standing in my bedroom wondering what to wear for hours on end. Eventually I'd arrive at a decision that was just the most ridiculous costume you could have ever devised - I think it was probably knitted Christmas jumpers on top of buttoned-up white shirts.

The upheavals of adolescence silenced 'A Christmas Carol' for a few years. I became a firebrand atheist. Christmas - humbug! Too commercial! Then I became an agnostic. Christmas was a pro-forma affair basically a chore. Buy mother a book dad a new tie my brother and sister small gifts. Pretend thanks for the fountain pens and shirts I received.

Also I used to think that one day I might get someone to iron my shirts but the truth is I really like doing them myself.

Why are we as a nation so obsessed with foreign things? Is it a legacy of our colonial years? We want foreign television sets. We want foreign shirts. We want foreign technology. Why this obsession with everything imported?

I hate ready-made suits button-down collars and sports shirts.

Everywhere I go I buy new music shirts.

If I was left to my own devices you would see about ten T-shirts in rotation with maybe a few nice pairs of jeans - but I also like to look good. I like feeling really well put together I just don't have the aptitude and the knowledge to do that.

No movie influenced me more to go after my dreams than 'Flashdance.' After seeing it I took 15 dance lessons a week. I cut all my sweatshirts. I did the 'Maniac' thing.

After graduating from flares and platforms in the early 1970s I started drama school wearing a pair of khaki dungarees with one of my Dad's Army shirts accessorised by a cat's basket doubling as a handbag. Very Lady Gaga.

A guy's biggest style mistake is definitely trying to look too cool. As long as you've got a good pair of jeans a good pair of boots and a few good shirts you're fine.