"I wasn’t even sure that I liked music in my early years. There was a massive generation gap between myself and my parents, and they didn’t get it at all. They had no concept of pop culture, so the music I heard when I was a child was all light entertainment. There was a round tin in the house with a picture of tulips on it that had some singles inside and they were all awful, like “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini.” It was all comedy. Just terrible. I wasn’t interested in it. But two things woke me up. One was “Telstar” by the Tornados. I heard it in a shop, and this person on the radio said, “This is the sound of the future.” That got my interest. I remember the squeaky organ sound, and it was all jolly exciting. Then the Beatles happened."

"I would probably have to go with the first one because it shaped my view of cinema as a kid, and as pure entertainment has a real place in cinema. It is one of the most seismic and significant events in recent cinema history — some might say detrimental — but it certainly led to a culture of whiz-bang cinema which we see now, but it meant so much to me as a kid, and Empire is the best of the first three. It also had that slightly weird edgy bleak sheer sort of joy of the first; suddenly everything went to s*** in the most spectacular way and it was kind of cool. I remember coming away from it so thrilled that they all got really beaten up. It’s widely regarded as the best of the three and it would be too obvious to say Star Wars."

"If you’re a fan of one of the Welsh rugby regions, then you’ll know this song. At Parc y Scarlets in Llanelli, this is what they come out to, and it’s amazing. The lyric is about the Welsh language and how it has withstood the Romans and English culture, but you don’t actually need to know that to appreciate the song. If you play it and it’s raining outside you can feel its spectral power. Dafydd Iwan had a long career in politics with Plaid Cymru but he is also a folk singer. I first heard it about 10 years ago when I went to see Cardiff Blues play the Scarlets. They came on to this song and it just hit me somewhere between my heart and my brain – the perfect place for a song to hit you. I wish I knew how to bottle the feeling this song gives me."