"Another movie that takes place in the Edwardian era, but in the country where Edward was actually reigning. It was an important movie for me as a kid and it continued to be something that I revisited again because it’s just good. Good storytelling, quite beautiful. You’ve got to love the matte paintings of the London rooftops. You’ve got to love a movie where a witch is your nanny. Obviously, no challenge to Dick van Dyke’s Australian Cockney accent, but his performance in that movie is really incredible. He is such a good physical comedian and when they’re in the chalk painting — which is also just lovely, the live action mix and the animation — he often has the same dance choreography as Julie Andrews. And he interprets it incredibly differently. It’s not that he can’t do them, it’s that he’s interpreting them in a different way, for humor, with his body type and so cleverly. It’s a movie where kids have power. They understand some things that their Edwardian dad doesn’t. And we use a Mary Poppins-esque weathervane shot in The Lighthouse. And then also, as much as it is a very, very satisfying narrative, the movie’s not without mystery. What is Mary Poppins’ backstory? What is her relationship with Bert? She creeps me out. Like when her reflection in the mirror keeps singing after her. The way she’s a little bit austere with the children and then the next minute she’s super cuddly, it is a little creepy. And then it just isn’t her, but when the kids get lost in East London, and there’s the dogs barking, and the old beggar woman who’s like, “Come here, children” or whatever. That was incredibly terrifying as a child."

"One of the first records I ever bought was Chubby Checker's 'Twistin Round The World'. He was a cultural phenomenon because the twist in those early days was a really big thing. He had an afternoon TV show every day called where he would show people how to do the twist. All it was was a green screen in those days and him doing all that stuff. I studied him, like anything else. Ernest Evans was his real name, and Kal Mann wrote those records, but the irony is that 'The Twist' was not originally recorded by Chubby Checker. It was recorded by Hank Ballard And The Midnighters, that was the original and he sounds just like Chubby. Chubby changed his name from Ernest Evans to Chubby Checker after Dick Clark's wife says, 'He reminds me of a young Fats Domino'. Fats, Chubby. Checker, Domino. Again, 'Twistin Round The World', with the globe behind it and everything, it showed me that this was a global phenomenon. That told me something. That's when I started to be aware that there are songs, then there are artists, and then there is the informational gathering of how you tell people how big you are, how famous you are. I remember later on that I saw an advertisement for Sabbath in Rolling Stone, and the ad said: 'Black Sabbath: Louder Than Led Zeppelin', I thought that was genius. It didn't say it was better, just louder. Chubby Checker had so many hits. Obviously 'The Twist', 'Let's Twist Again', 'Pony Time', 'The Fly', 'Limbo Rock', lots of stuff! He must have had 20 hits. Great music isn't just songs; it's also a social tool, like a favourite song that people used to get married or something like that."

"It's funny because it's one of the first classical records that I would have given some time to. I liked it because it felt obviously about something that I could understand and that it had some good tunes on it, in fact it has just one or two main themes and variations on them, as the name suggests. This one has a special place for me, as it's sort of helped me through. 'Nimrod', where the theme is at its purest, is just one of the most amazing pieces of music in history. It hits every kind of right emotional pitch at the right time. I can only listen to once every couple of years, because it just makes me cry, it's really astonishing. I think I listened to it when I was about 17. I am interested in classical music - I could rattle off... The people that seem to do the most for me are between 1900 and 1940, it's Stravinsky and Ravel, Shostakovich. Fauré is a recent acquisition, but I don't want to sound like a dick-ponce [laughs]! I think it's simply because it's where the Romantic movement is morphing into modernity and after the war, it really goes completely mental and I can't handle most of that. Although I do like a few post-modernists like Brant and Glass, people who are a joy as well. It's that period in the twenties, though, where there was some crazy stuff going on. Where they're really using dissonance and incredible syncopation that had never got a look in - for me, that's really enjoyable, where everything's going a bit mental. But they had still got good tunes, that's very important for me."