"I have a Polaroid of Kurt Cobain on my kitchen corkboard. It's him holding a kitten, two of my favourite things in the world: Kurt and kittens, the two 'k's! I was deeply in love [laughs] with him, on a hormonal level, for a long time. But I think in terms of what he taught me as a budding creative person and an angsty, very troubled teenager. It sounds really cheesy, but he got me through many many days of bunking school. When I think of Bleach, I've just put [points to phone] "bunking school", that's basically what I did. Just that first track 'Blew', there's that bass sound [sings], and it was just so dirty and rank and then there's feedback and his voice - [sings] "NO RECESS!' - on 'School'. What was so exciting about the fact that they had become so loved and so big was that they didn't compromise any of that aggression, anger and rawness. I just love people that become really successful by not compromising anything, and being completely true to their own spirit. At that time, I was starting to writing books of poetry and play guitar in my bedroom. I'd pretend to get the train to school, and then come back in and climb through the window and just spend all day with Bleach and Incesticide on a tape, and I'd just turn them over and [listen to] 'Dive', 'Love Buzz' and 'Floyd The Barber'. It was just the ability to play this album as loud in my bedroom as I possibly could and just scream along to it, and just feel there was a little soulmate, who had this similar thing, just guiding me through. I think that visceralness really gave voice to something that I was finding difficult to express and because I was finding my own singing voice, and very shy about it, it was like really nice to be able to not have to sound, as a girl, pretty and nice - all the female musicians like that, they're very beautiful, but to get that kind of guttural, animalistic scream was really liberating."

"Noir, of course, typically displays shadows, rain, urban darkness, blunt seediness, and the realization that since not just at the end but at the center of things are death and other hopeless mysteries, human striving is meaningless. There’s something soothing about realizing that all is futile. It’s liberating. Kiss Me Deadly might be the most cynical and fatalistic noir of them all. It happens to take place in sunny LA, but it’s certainly got the seediness too, including fantastic location shooting in long-gone slums. It’s one of those flicks that’s too good to be true. You’re stopped alone at a motel somewhere in the desert late at night, dead tired, but you can’t sleep, so you switch on the TV . . . and there’s a near-teenage Cloris Leachman running towards you, moaning and sobbing in the darkness, too blonde and naked to believe. But there she is. What a world. Ralph Meeker speeds up in a Jaguar! Nat King Cole warbles on the radio. Cloris is named after Christina Rossetti! It’s 1955. She’s a bitter feminist escapee from a mental asylum. And it just gets better, all the way till after the last second. Along with the action, corruption, sadism, and sex (when the blonde in her car, who happens to be behind Mike Hammer when he parks in a driveway, is immediately compelled to press herself against him and kiss him, framed with bulging taillights protruding from the fin of the forward auto, somehow it's sexier than the porniest pornography), the photography/mise-en-scène would make this movie immortal alone. It’s the kind of movie that makes me laugh at the notion of “art” photography. A few thousand frames from this one film would make a better life’s work in photography than any artist has yet created. Cindy Sherman has a right to a living like everyone else, but, Jesus . . . Nicholas Raymondo (“Very Smart. Very Bright. Very Sad.”) was “sad . . . for the way the world is,” but as Christina tells us: if you should forget me for a while And afterwards remember, do not grieve: For if the darkness and corruption leave A vestige of the thoughts that once I had, Better by far you should forget and smile It’s actually misquoted in the movie, but it’s still probably the nicest thing that’s happened to Christina Rossetti in a hundred years . . ."

"After Patti, I sold all my record collection because I felt I couldn't have any music around me that didn't do something to me like Horses did. For about six months, I had no other records, except Lou Reed's Berlin as I felt that was comparably powerful and emotive. After those six months, punk started. I thought punk was fun and it reached the anger in me that needed to come out. I had been sent away to school; being sent to a boarding school was like being sent away to prison by parents who apparently loved you. So, I had a lot of anger and distress at this strange turn of events and I started going to punk gigs. The first gig I organised to see was the White Riot tour with The Jam, Buzzcocks, Subway Sect and The Slits. It turned into a bit of a riot and we were these schoolboys in our uniforms with one teacher to chaperone us, and suddenly chairs and tables were flying through the air. After that, I was banned from organising any more trips to punk gigs. So, even though I was banned, I decided to get the school magazine to employ me as a journalist. I would try to interview the first local punk band that came down to Shrewsbury. That happened to be Wire, who were a fascinating band. I think Pink Flag is one of the only punk albums that has stood the test of time. It is a remarkable piece of music. There are songs that last 45 seconds and others that last two or three minutes. It is quite a feat to pull off a 45-second song and make it work. Wire were wonderful to interview – intelligent and articulate – and their music was brutal and yet humorous at the same time, which was a very odd thing for punk. To call an album Pink Flag, after the label that the Nazis put on gay people in the camps, was an incredibly brave thing to do in such homophobic times. Punk, although liberating in many aspects, was pretty homophobic until Tom Robinson came along and confronted it directly. Pink Flag was a miracle of creativity in these short, harsh little songs. Even to this day, when I listen to it, I think it is a masterpiece. I think it would have influenced a band like Pixies. I don't know if Pixies ever heard Wire, but I would be very surprised if they hadn't."