The reason I'm uncomfortable with celebrity and don't care about it is that none of that matters. I think that's why people attack me and think I'm arrogant. I've never felt the need to justify myself. If I make good music, that music will do the job for me, even when I'm dead and gone.

I'm quite happy being famous for what I do but I'm not happy about being famous for the sake of being famous.

Otis Redding was the ultimate 60s soul singer. We only get an indication of what he might have become, but he had the best soul pipes a lad could wish for.

A Hard Day's Night' is the most perfect pop album you'll ever get to hear in your life; it's filled with definitive versions of the two-minute pop song.

In January 1999, I proposed an initiative to the Music Industry Forum which I called Communities In Tune. Its aim was to bring community centres to the Internet generation.

Whatever the means of delivery, whatever the technological and corporate structures, music will always be about groups of talented individual performers communicating emotionally with individual fans.

When we treat music as an industrial commodity, and young people as merely consumers, we overlook the joy of participating in music... of learning to play an instrument, of joining a band or an orchestra, and playing gigs.

I've got one of those heart-shaped faces and I take weight on my cheeks and jowls and gut, so in pictures I look much heavier than I actually am.

I had a spate of being run over between the ages of 11 and 13. I was quite a rambunctious child, I had a little moped I used to ride illegally. I got hit by cars three times because I was a very day-dreamy kid.

I keep reading that I'm diminutive - why do people call me that? I'm 5ft 11in with size 11 feet. I'd actually like smaller feet. It might be a fetish, but I do like graceful feet, and small ones lend themselves to grace.