"I wish I could choose something cool and artsy. I’ll tell you what I saw, which I think kind of shot into my list, and I only watched it recently — I’m ashamed that I didn’t see it earlier — was The Squid and the Whale. It was absolutely fantastic. Again, I guess, similar in tone to the other films I’ve mentioned. A sort of, you know, domestic comedy-drama, but very, very truthful, and brilliant performances again. Is it Jesse Eisenberg who’s in that movie? Yeah, I just thought that was tremendous. Luckily, my parents never got divorced, I never went through that, but it really takes you into the experience of watching your parents split up. And I think cinema’s at its best when it makes you feel an experience that you’ve never had yourself, and sort of understand the emotions of it. I was really impressed by that movie. Just a great, kind of… shot through with this black spine of humor."

"It's an overlooked record I think. They were in the midst of breaking up. They were writing separately, and here you can really tell the differences between the Lennon–McCartney and George Harrison songs. What I find really interesting about the record is how it's not really polished. 'Glass Onion' is as unique a song as I've ever heard, and with self-reference: 'I told you about Strawberry Fields', 'the walrus was Paul'; I mean all that stuff! It refers to things the fans were talking about. It's a spectacular album. It doesn't connect like Abbey Road or Let It Be anywhere near as fast because the songs are all over the place. In the days when album covers and packaging meant so much, it was just a brave statement to say it doesn't have a title and leave it white. There is no title anywhere on the record, that's fantastic! Just the solo photos of the band inside. It's a strange record."

"Zappa divides opinion massively. Bottom line is, he's a dick. And you can't escape it. The years as they've gone on have been less kind to him. His later stuff is horrible – misogynistic, very jock-ish. He was famously anti-drugs, would fine band members if they used drugs. He was very showy too. I've got a bunch of his records and I never listen to them… apart from Hot Rats, which I just love. The cover is fantastic and deeply unsettling. The band playing it are insanely talented – Ian Underwood, Shuggie Otis… Beefheart. For me, the album is the first two tracks. 'Willie The Pimp' has one of my favourite guitar solos ever – it's completely mind-melting. Zappa had a really big following in Liverpool amongst casuals – I remember going up there in the '90s and seeing his name daubed on walls in emulsion. Considering how much he hated drugs, he really did seem to connect with stoners."

"I, as a child, loved Mary Poppins. Something about these misunderstood kids who couldn’t catch a break, and this fantastic woman coming into their life and showing them this other world, and yet also being so coy: “I don’t know what you’re talking about. What world do you mean?” I just really liked escapism as a child, I guess. The time element of Britain in another era, and then this fantastical element of going into pictures and cartoons and flying and laughing. It’s like it was so exciting to me, even though it came out 30 years before I was born. Something like that. It was a real go-to as a kid. In the last two and a half decades, it still works. It doesn’t drag. It’s still like the magic is still there. Whereas maybe other films from that era may or may not have aged quite as gracefully as Mary Poppins has."