"This is proof that despite the difficulties it is possible to make a wonderful film from a wonderful but very long book, in this case Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s The Leopard, which describes the dissolution of the great Sicilian ruling families during the 1860s. Set in the magnificent and sometimes crumbling palaces of Palermo and the arid Sicilian summer countryside, the film shows us the privileged but largely pointless lifestyle of the ruling elite, threatened by political change and their own inertia. One shot in the film encapsulates the message: when the central family arrives at their country estate exhausted from the grueling journey there, they enter the local church and sit in their family pew, along the length of the nave. The camera tracks across their faces, exhausted and gray with dust. The reference is unmistakable; they resemble those mummified bodies held in catacombs under the Capuchin monastery of Palermo, held upright in endless rows, many still in their nineteenth-, even eighteenth-century clothes, rotting and collapsing, covered in the dust of centuries. It is a beautiful example of how much can be said in a single camera shot when used by a master."

"The first interview we did was with The Face, and we were all sitting in a room and it wasn’t going too well. When it came out they must have thought we were the most awkward bastards. Will wasn’t helping much – he was in bed with a torch under the sheets, presumably so he could see his knob. I was asked my influences and I said Lou and Bowie, and I said I loved Abba. The others afterwards said they wished I hadn’t have mentioned Abba, but I didn’t say it for effect, they were this side thing that helped. Every time a song came out it was like, ""fucking hell""! Just utterly brilliant, great melodies, and Agnetha, the best female voice of all time – and the other one wasn’t bad either. It was just so cute – I hate that word – some of the awkward lyrics, but over time was it charm, or just genius lyrics. The relationship songs are just brilliant – I wish I’d have written them. ‘When I Kissed The Teacher’ – you can’t get away with that now, what with the Catholic Church and Jimmy Savile having destroyed all the foundations of decency."