I'm not a sad person upset the whole time but I seem to be quite emotional.

People say oh it's a shame you're not nostalgic about the '60s. Well actually it's quite good when you think of it. Wouldn't it be sad if I was sitting here wishing it back?

Even when I'm in quite a happy state of mind I like writing really sad songs. I think a lot of people do.

I feel quite sad for the young musicians coming up because they may never get to pay their rent properly. It doesn't matter what the genre nowadays it's so much harder than it ever was.

As a kid I quite fancied the romantic Bohemian idea of being an artist. I expect I thought I could escape from the difficulties of maths and spelling. Maybe I thought I would avoid the judgement of the establishment.

I did send a girl a plane ticket asking her for a visit I guess that's quite romantic.

I'm pretty upfront about my love and admiration for the military. One of the perks of making movies is that you get to sort of follow your own passions and I believe quite passionately that we don't pay enough attention and respect to our veterans. Not just our wounded veterans but all veterans.

I work on words quite separately to music. They're both ongoing and I don't ever feel like I'm working in a cycle in that respect because it's every day anyway no matter what I'm doing. Then I get to a point when I've collected together enough words that seem like they want to be songs rather than poems or sometimes not.

I think more and more respect has been accorded to teachers and quite rightly so.

I admire the Elsie Tanners and Barbara Windsors of the world: people who have crawled back from the abyss. I'm quite camp in that respect.