"I have to pay my respects to two very influential cinema figures for me. Laurel and Hardy are probably the biggest influence for me, just in terms of sense ofm humour, when I was a kid, and in terms of what I continue to laugh at. If I had to pick one I’d say it would be Way Out West. I watched it recently and it still holds up. The reason why I think I latched on to them so much is because as a team they had such a great balance. Oliver Hardy was such a great anal retentive straight man, but still funny in his own right. They had such different comedic perspectives but when they worked together they created such a perfect synthesis; just a perfect balance of extremes, of odd coupling. I feel like all of my favorite comedy since then in some way draws from that — Planes, Trains and Automobiles comes to mind, and What About Bob?, and Midnight Run; these all employ the same template and they’re my favorites, but I feel like I can trace it all the way to Way Out West."

"You can’t leave Casablanca and Gone with the Wind and Citizen Kane off of this list, but there are other movies that I think of when I think, “I’m going to watch a movie tonight that I’ve already seen — what is it going to be?” It’s so hard. I think Groundhog Day is one of the great movies. To me — and I know a lot of movies — it’s a very original form. It has this light touch, and [a] cynical main character who is taught a lesson about what matters. It’s a profound movie and I never get tired of watching it. I think Bill Murray is amazing in it. The script is ingenious. Obviously, it’s one of a kind and everyone tries to figure out a new version of it, but it is what it is, and I salute it for its originality and for the fact that I always feel very emotional when the character just comes down to it and says every day is the same day, and it’s up to you to make something out of it. That’s something profound and it’s said in such a funny way."

"For the four years between 1971 and 1975 one could say that Robert Altman didn’t touch the ground. I am strangely less sensitive to his previous work, including M*A*S*H, and what followed (too baroque for my taste), but Thieves Like Us, California Split, The Long Goodbye and McCabe & Mrs. Miller are the great successes of a cinema free of all constraints and carried by the best of the spirit of their time. It is hard to believe today that these films were actually financed by a studio and were even popular successes. Nashville is the culmination of this rather miraculous cycle. And even its transcendence – being a sort of “total-film” – its timelessness grasps the American spirit in a way that few films have. One feels at times it veers toward caricature that is a little cynical – Geraldine Chaplin, a very young Jeff Goldblum – which gives a glimpse of what will follow it; but for the most part, the film is in a state of grace, at once funny, cruel, profound and always seeking human and social truths – with a scalpel."

"I got dragged to this by some young relatives in Greece after a frustrating day in an immigration office thanks to Brexit. I hadn’t seen the first three installments and the film was dubbed in Greek, which hindered my grasp to some degree, only it turned out to be one of my most memorable experiences in a cinema and a lot of that was down to the uninhibited audience. I saw the film in the same open-air cinema (on the outskirts of Athens) where I saw “Dirty Dancing” over 30 years ago, which was even wilder with the beyond capacity audience who went crazy when the film’s climactic dance erupted. Though not reaching the euphoric audience chaos of the latter film, “Toy Story 4” was a timely reminder of how valuable and downright memorable a communal cinema experience is. I was completely swept up in the highs and lows of the film and never imagined that the fate of a single-use plastic item could reduce adults to tears. It was funny, scary and heavy on the heart in places. I actually bought it on DVD hoping to repeat the experience."

"I think I must have heard it on tour in the late 90s. When you’re a kid you know Lust For Life or The Passenger and all about his work with Bowie. But when it came to less well-known stuff, it was different. It was before you could find things out so easily, you just had to know a bit about the artist and dig around a bit. When I heard this I thought, “What a great band, what a great time!”. It’s got that slightly postpunk feel, it’s so tight, the drums are really dry. And I love the backing vocals – when the rest of the band do them it’s like a gang but it isn’t laddy; it’s got a cool sophistication about it. I think that’s what Iggy brings to things: he’s raw, he’s kind of punk, but he always has a sense of style. Maybe that’s what Bowie and Iggy saw in each other, that common ground of not over-intellectualising things, of being throwaway but with care and thought. And I love his lyrics, they can be funny – especially with some of the ad-libs – but always cool."

"This reminds me of my dad. He was into liberation drum circles in the Matabele community in Zimbabwe and he worked with people from that community. This is a record from the Ndebele language. Nothembi is an amazing guitarist and it's a rocking album with amazing synths as well. I've been playing this quite a bit over the past year. I almost got to play with her but she didn't turn up. My dad used to listen to Thomas Mapfumo - who supported The Stone Roses at Spoke Island - and I thought this was really funny [at the time] - I should have asked my dad to come along to that gig! My influences for music were more down to my big brother and sister and my mam was into different music again. It's inevitable that you are influenced by people around you. I'd get Anglo-American punk rock and pop music from my brother and sister but my dad wasn't into that; [for him] reggae was acceptable and maybe Welsh language pop. He didn't engage with music to the point where he had influenced my sound whereas my brother and sister's records influenced me directly."

"Is this the ultimate in production? It’s probably one of them. I think you’ll find The Beatles might say that! They were always in competition at that point. You know, I’ve obviously spoken to The Beatles a lot but I like every track on Pet Sounds; I think they’re all equally as good. I couldn’t even pick one out if it because the arrangements were so unusual at the time. I remember it was ’66 and in some parts it sounds like an old dance band. I’d think, ""wow""! That’s so old fashioned yet so brand new at the same time. The arrangements were weird with these big harmonicas and funny, deep saxophones and plain little paper cups and playing the drums on them. What the hell was that? Brilliant! Brian [Wilson] was absolutely marvellous. Luckily for me, I did get to work with him and we wrote a song together called ‘Let It Shine’ on his album, Brian Wilson, in about ’89 or something. I got to know him quite well and he was a lovely guy and we wrote this tune and it was very nice and I’m really glad that I did."

"I’ll start with This is Spinal Tap. It sort of took an American perspective to show the characters and the attitudes surrounding British rock bands in the 1970s and 1980s, which, I guess, was what it was supposed to be, and I just thought the characters drawn were so excellent. And yet, it was odd, because everyone involved was American. You’d think it’d be just the kind of thing that some British writers or comedians could’ve done better, but clearly we didn’t. And I thought Christopher Guest, et al., did it fantastically well. It’s just always a kind of reassuringly funny film. The best comedy is watching humans interact, and people with their own petty ambitions, and self delusions, and all that sort of stuff. And that movie is absolutely brim full of it. If they say that comedy is essentially exaggerated truth, that was almost the perfect exemplar of it, where it’s almost a documentary. Well, it is obviously a mockumentary, but you don’t have to exaggerate much for it to become inherently comic. So that’s kind of what it is. It’s a perfect exaggeration, but exaggerated not very much."