"For any musician – not so much vocalists, but anyone who played guitar – when this came out it changed everything. I went to see them at the Rainbow in London, because I missed them supporting Black Sabbath. We were making our first album in London at the time and they were unbelievable: it was a West Coast rock & roll party and a new era in guitar playing. I had never seen anything like it before. Then all the glam metal bands copied Van Halen, because they were the first of the hair metal bands, selling sex. That’s really how they looked. ‘Running WIth The Devil’ is a fucking fantastic rock song – not quite as good as ‘Smoke On The Water’, but not far off."

"I was very privileged to grow up when Biggie was coming from being an underground rapper to people knowing him as the B.I.G and the legend that he became. The same with Tupac; the East Coast West Coast rivalry, Bad Boy against Death Row - it was amazing to be around for that. “I loved what Puffy had done with Biggie, because he got him to start using these huge samples from Motown records and R&B artists. He became a little more poppy in that sense, but Biggie still retained his earthy, Brooklyn swagger. “I was playing “Mo Money Mo Problems” in the clubs, at a young age. I was probably about 16 at the time, sneaking my way into clubs and because Flash was 10 years older than me, I kinda styled it out. He was playing in a community nightclub in Southampton, where my dad was one of the board members. When I went down there, I'd kinda get squeezed to get in there, but the mic was basically free. ""One time I jumped up on the mic and started ad-libbing around what Flash was playing and I think he was 'Who's this kid with the audacity to do that?' He probably secondly thought 'Wow, that's Craig, and Craig's dad pays my wages! So I need to calm myself as to how I react to this!' And then thirdly, I think he thought I was talented. “He took me under his wing. I'd get to play that little set at the end of his set, and he'd let me emcee for him for the night. So that song brings back all those memories"

"It was just a very definitive moment in not only West Coast hip hop, but hip hop in general. It was a bridge - it was young hip hop with an old soul, which made it alternative. Rap was still fairly young at that point. I had a friend who was a very cool guy, he had the weed, and always had a demeanour about him - 'I know something you don't'. He had an advance copy, which made it even cooler. Almost every break beat there is is used on that album, which gives you an unwritten indication that anyone could have done it - but of course, that's not true. Technically, he started where we all had to start from, which is the bottom. That's what's cool about it."

"First is Say Anything…. In terms of protagonists it doesn’t get any better than Lloyd Dobler, and John Cusack is kind of like the Holy Grail in terms of awesome ’80s protagonists that are kind of lost and don’t know what they want to do. That great speech where he says “I don’t wanna sell anything… bought, sold or processed” or whatever — you know that scene? — it’s just kind of a genius way of describing what a character’s going through. Quite frankly my character in this movie is going through a very similar thing: clearly a smart guy, probably kind of paralyzed in life because he’s done it to himself. He’s kind of over-thinking everything, so the only thing he can think of is to do nothing and work at Sun Coast video."

"As counterweight to the weird and eerie elements in many of the books I have selected I propose the sweet and kind Summer Book. Tove Jansson’s fictionalized memoir about the summers she spent as a girl with her grandmother on a tiny island in the archipelago off Finland’s south coast is a wonderful ode to the curiosity of childhood and the wisdom of old age. In a precise, lyrical language that never gives in to easy sentiments Jansson allows us to take part in the summer days with the girl and the grandmother as one is discovering nature for the first time and the other is contemplating its vulnerability. It is sunshine in the shape of a book — for the shadowy part of Jansson’s oeuvre one must look to her children stories about the Moomins."