"For me a favorite movie is a movie that you can watch at any time, and so I would say Gone With the Wind. I think the cool thing about Gone With the Wind… Well, this is what I decided, as I get older and more intelligent, why I like the film — because as a little kid I just loved the love story, and the Civil War was an interesting thing to me — but now it’s that I think it’s really cool to have the heroine of a film be someone that you really just don’t wanna like. You struggle liking her and I think that’s awesome. It is not a happy film. When it ends it’s just so heartbreaking, and I know it’s happening but I just can’t handle it every time."

"And then, I’m going to go with Sexy Beast, a little off of the comedy. Why I love that movie so much is that Ray Winstone is such a badass. I’m a big fan of Nil by Mouth as well, and I knew him from Nil by Mouth. It starts out, he’s with his friends, and [speaking in a British accent] they’re all talking, out there at the restaurant, and he’s like, “Yeah, I’ll get the chicken thing.” “What chicken thing?” And then the friend comes in like, “Ah sh**, just leave it outside.” And they go, “We have something to tell you. Don’s coming.” And then you see him basically sh** his pants, like, “Don? Don’s coming? What’s Don coming for? No, no, God, not Don!” And I’m watching like, “Holy sh**! Who would Ray Winstone be afraid of? This better not be the Ben Kingsley role. This better not be that f***ing little Ghandi motherf***er coming in, scaring Ray Winstone.” And right after the first scene with him, he’s just riding in the car silently; he’s just quiet. Then he gets out of the car and goes, “I’ve got to change my shirt. I’m sweating like a f***ing ****!” [laughs] Oh my God! And he’s so good in it. And it was ultimately a love story, a love story. It was all about his love for his ex-porn actress wife. So f***ing awesome."

"""And then you get into the contentious fifth film, and I’ve jotted down a bunch of things I thought, well Ran is a possibility. I love Akira Kurosawa‘s take on King Lear, I love what he did to it. I love the movement, the battles. You know, there’s nothing about that film I do not enjoy. Laurel and Hardy’s Way Out West, because I thought that would be a wonderful choice, and it does have, to my mind, the finest dance in the whole of film. But, I thought about A Matter of Life and Death, which was a film that was enormously inspirational when making Good Omens. I felt like that was of the same DNA as the thing that we were doing … Also Bedazzled, the original Peter Cook and Dudley Moore Bedazzled, which again has a lot of the DNA of Good Omens in it. But eventually I came down on Belle et la bête, [Jean] Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast. I remember watching it and feeling transported. For me, it’s like dreaming. It does the same that Bride of Frankenstein does, where I can never quite remember the plot when it’s over, I’m just aware that it’s finished now and this wonderful place that I went has gone away. My children do not like black-and-white films, and once, for Father’s Day, my daughters asked what I wanted for Father’s Day, and I asked, “Will you watch this film with me? It’s a foreign language film, so you won’t like it, and it’s black and white, so you won’t like it, but will you watch it with me?” They said, “Well yeah, for Father’s Day we will.” And what I loved was that after 10 minutes, they had forgotten that it was a foreign language film, and they had forgotten that it was a black-and-white film, and they were entranced by this retelling of Beauty and the Beast, made by Cocteau not even on a shoestring; he’s in post-war France, immediately post war, and they had no money for anything. Everything is being improvised. Everything is being created on the fly, and yet what they come up with is something that is so much cooler than any infinite amount of CGI."""

"One of the greatest gifts I’ve even been given was when someone told me to check out Blue Nile. It’s extraordinary, they are such a great band. And you feel like you’re part of a little club once you get to know their music. They don’t get name checked very often, but I remember Guy Garvey mentioned them when he was picking up an award for Elbow and it’s like, you’re looking out for someone who knows their music and when you find them you have an immediate jumping off point. Hats has got that emotional element. It’s got a song called 'The Downtown Lights' - I’ve got to be careful not to say every song I mention here’s the great song I’ve ever heard, but 'The Downtown Lights' is certainly up there. What I like about Paul Buchanan’s writing is that his songs are like atmospherics or they’re kind of analogous. They don’t kind of necessarily describe situations very directly but he frames them in a different way. 'The Downtown Lights' is a great example, I suppose it’s saying that he wants companionship and that the world of the downtown lights and the busy streets and all of that stuff is a kind of representation of what it’s like when he’s with whoever he’s trying to describe in the story of the song. To frame a love song like that is really interesting. The production’s interesting with them as well - sometimes I wonder if people are put off by that. Especially the 80s stuff, it can be very synth-y and almost, it’s almost, really super middle-of-the-road! There’s something about it that can be really obvious but once you get into it, it’s the greatest gift because the lyrics are so subtle and nuanced. It’s something I revisit when I’m in a reflective or nostalgic mood."

"I love Bill Withers and this is my favourite Bill Withers record. Again, it's about the rhythm section. It has the most beautiful songs, but also the most incredible rhythm. This is just a particularly good selection of songs - you've got 'Use Me' on there, which is a classic, and that would be the first song I'd ever heard by him, when I was really young, like 12, in the clubs in Norwich - [adopts Norfolk accent] "excuse me, have you got 'Use Me'?". But now 'Kissing My Love' is pretty much my favourite song on that record. It's just beautiful, beautiful music: a beautiful, beautiful man, incredible singing, but also something you can actually have a dance too. What more can you ask than that? It covers all bases."

"Different racers might tell you what they get out of being part of this sport — the King once told me something like, “I didn’t miss out on a family life because of racing, I had one because of it”! I love that. For “Champion” Chick Hicks it’s always been about a trophy. You ask me, though? It’s not about winning. It’s not even about being up front. It’s about being side by side, nose to nose. The competition. It pushes you. It makes it special. And it can give you that extra little bit of horsepower when the chips are down, you’re in a slump, and you’re itching for a comeback. Secretariat really drives that home, you know? Talk about horsepower in a comeback story!"