"Jean-Pierre Jeunet is a filmmaker that I’ve since followed, you know, throughout his career and I think he’s one of my favorites and a kind of, you know, a very distinctive voice in France, but that film still I think is probably my favorite of his. I feel like he kind of almost returned to form a little bit with Micmacs. Micmacs really reminded me of Delicatessen in terms of its vibe. But Delicatessen is just, there’s a great amount of comedy to it, the characters are so bizarre and so well-drawn. The world is so strange, it’s not totally relatable. It’s very funny. It’s very dark. I remember when I saw that movie, I’d never seen anything like it. And I think by the time I saw Delicatessen for the first time, City of Lost Children had already come and gone. But Delicatessen was the first thing that I’d seen. And , you know, from an art direction standpoint, I think I was also so unbelievably impressed, because it was him and his partner, and I can’t remember his partner’s name who was also kind of like his art director."

"Dare was amazing. It came out around the same time as Soft Cell's Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret. You can't not mention Soft Cell, and you can't not mention Gary Numan either, in popularising electronic music. I'd seen The Human League perform at Eric's in front of three people - me, Jane Casey and some drunk lying on the floor - and it was in the Martyn Ware era, with Phil Oakey looking amazing with his asymmetric haircut, and the fabulous slides and the little constructed archways which had the synthesizers, which looked - I suppose - rather Kraftwerk. And you know, ""Listen to the voice of Buddha"" [on 'Being Boiled'], the Travelogue album, was amazing and groundbreaking in many ways. It was not commercially successful at all, and I remember in particular their version of 'You've Lost That Loving Feeling' being incredible. But when Dare came, it was an attempt at global pop superstardom and ABBA-ness, as well as being groundbreaking and electronic. It was time I became aware of the Linn drum machine, and the programming on that album is fantastic. The engineer Dave Allen at night time would be editing instrumentals together and that became The League Unlimited Orchestra album [1982's Love And Dancing], which was also incredible to dance to in seedy gay nightclubs, which I also did [laughs]. I was then more aware of technology by this point and had been working in a recording studio with the TR-808 drum machine which, although a plastic instrument, seemed slightly paltry to the meaty sounds of the sampled bass and snare of Dare, which was the Linn LM-1. It sounded like a real drummer but obviously wasn't and was intrinsic to the sound of that album. My favourite was 'Love Action', not 'Don't You Want Me', which is always cited and is the most successful. 'Love Action' was always the one for me."