"I read it first as an 18-year old and, just like a meteor from a distant galaxy, it hit my tender young brain and dug its way deep into its gray material. It has nestled there ever since, radiating with beauty and wonder, irony and horror. This autumn I visited the ground zero of The Master and Margarita, the famous Patriarch Ponds in Moscow where Lucifer himself, in the guise of the Professor Woland, makes his first appearance in the book and sets the whole story in motion. For a second I wondered if he would come for me too. But then I remembered that Old Nick owned my soul already, having given it as a toy to Bulgakov all those years ago."

"I tapped into this song because until I was 18, 19 I really hadn’t been out of Wales very much, and then I was going to London with the band and doing these pub gigs. I had a couple of experiences in London where I thought, “This isn’t the way they do it back home!” Welcome to the Jungle is about this guy from Indiana [Axl Rose] stepping off the Greyhound bus and landing in west Hollywood somewhere – welcome to the jungle! In a romantic way, Richey’s Vauxhall Astra became my Greyhound bus when we all drove up, and the song spoke to me in that way. Guns N’ Roses were a massive influence on us in the early days."