"This book was given to me as a sort of joke gift by a friend, but it ended up serving two purposes: Firs, it’s a great read from one of the true female pioneers in the movie and theater world. Witty, smart, giving the reader a glimpse into an era that’s long gone. Second, the cover has enormous camp value, and always draws attention. So it works both intellectually and decoratively—not unlike some of the characters Loos wrote about!"

"Electro 1 represents the kickstart of that kind of music for me and a whole crew of mates. We were 13 or 14, this arty, conscientious little urban crew of kids just roaming around. It was fun, it was exciting because the music was really hard to get hold of, there was only one pirate radio station, I think it was Tim Westwood that did it. You had to tune into it on a Thursday at 4 o’ clock. They would play all these kinds of tunes, but no one else was into them. No one was into hip hop. Everyone else was into that gothy fucking angular stuff, whereas I didn’t know who The Smiths were until about four years ago. We were kind of early pioneers, well, not pioneers, we were rubbish Chiswick kids, trying to be a bit urban, adopting some of the clothes but quite naively. We all looked like total pricks. I always got it wrong and wore a chef’s hat or something. I was like the dude in the band that never looked quite right, the Gary Barlow one who doesn’t fit the clothes that the stylist’s picked out."

"Nobody can underestimate the world changing impact that The Beatles had on my generation. It was so powerful and revolutionary. It enabled us all to see the possibility of picking up a guitar and expressing ourselves in any way you wanted. And they were the pioneers of change and innovation. They were symbolic in the sense that we were all looking for something new and they provided it. When I heard Please Please Me, it was like it was from another world. This album represents the beginning, when they had been playing clubs and were first capturing that creative energy and raw vocals. This was the bare naked, early origin of many of these artists in this piece of music and I loved it. Of course, they went on to do many things after that, but this was the kernel, the seed of what they were to do later."

"I remember when I first heard Fear Of A Black Planet it was, again, one of those moments when you thought ‘this is something’. It was still at the relatively early stages of rap, but Chuck D was really onto something. The sound of the tracks – the rhythm units they were using with those tiny percussion sounds – was unlike anything I’d heard. That’s why I chose it. Jay-Z has made some great records, as has Dr. Dre but Fear Of A Black Planet changed things. We covered ‘911 Is A Joke’, which we got an enormous amount of flak for. Middle class white boys covering Public Enemy – what were they thinking? I can tell you the irony wasn’t lost on us. In fact, Flavor Flav loved our version, which was a huge thrill. Public Enemy were pioneers who went out on a limb and started something which has become the biggest paradigm shift in music that we have had in the last 25 years. You look at some of those songs and think about how many samples they contain – the list is enormous. But that sampling technology is something we’ve all used since. Public Enemy were inventors, as were others with the albums I’ve chosen. They moved music to a new place and that’s what turns me on."