"It's not quite finished, and that's why it's a classic example of what they were becoming, and that's why I love it. I love coming across a record when you can hear what the band could become. Unfortunately with them, I don't think they really ever got there. For me, they could have been the British R.E.M.. I remember myself and Nick saw the band at WOMAD fest in 1986. We decided we had to go to one festival to see what everything was about - it was either '85 or '86 - and we saw James, when they'd just come out with 'Hymn From A Village', when they were a completely different band, and they were brilliant to be honest. We saw Siouxsie And The Banshees and Arrow, and I think The Housemartins were there, and we also saw The Blue Aeroplanes. They were fucking amazing; one of the best live bands I've ever seen. It was pre-Bez and they had a dancer with them onstage; he was called Wojtek [Dmochowski] and the singer was just scatting poetry over the music. For a band that made quite delicate music they were full-on, they were moving lots, it was just pure fully formed erudite freneticism. It was just lovely. We came away thinking, "Wow, we'd love to be in a fucking band who connect onstage like that, with what's in their music and really physically trying to impose yourself on an audience." I love this record because it's got a song on it called 'Arriving', which has the line: "I saw the sun shimmering on a broken breeze." Nick was obsessed with that line when he was young. There's another song called 'When The Wave Comes' which is beautiful, the actual song 'Tolerance' is just brilliant. It's not a perfect album but you can hear this promise of what this band could have been. Me and Nick went to this festival and we fucking hated the experience of going to this festival, we hated people were trying to sell us drugs, but we loved seeing The Blue Aeroplanes. It was a little Damascene moment which made us really, truly believe about how physical a gig could be. We were determined to not be a band that stood still and just looked at our feet or guitar fretboards after that; we were determined that we would move round shitloads. We walked away quite loftily saying, "We're never coming back to a festival unless we play one," which just shows how snotty and fucking deluded we were."

"Let me try and think of a comedy. At university, I wrote about Annie Hall. I know Woody Allen is currently a contentious issue, but that film as a comedy, if we can separate the art from the person for whatever reason, is such a clever, poetic film, but it’s written in the same way that a poem is… When you read a piece of prose, it’s very formal and everything follows one after the other. It’s very conventional. Poetry is different because it draws attention to itself as writing, and it rhymes and does different things, and it uses rhythm. Annie Hall in the same way does that cinematically. It’s kind of like a cinematic poem, and it’s just really, really smartly made. It’s one of the few comedies that ever got nominated or actually won any Oscars. Comedy, I think, is one of the most underrated art forms that there is, particularly in terms of material rewards. There is no Oscar for best comedy. There is no Oscar for best comic performance. I think that’s a shame, and I think if there was, then Jim Carrey would be laden down with scones. It’s not something everybody can do. You might dismiss Ace Ventura: Pet Detective as a ridiculous, goofy, throwaway movie, but it is a virtuoso performance from Jim Carrey, as often is with his work. You see a lot of so-called straight actors, serious actors, trying to do comedy, and they cannot do it. I think comedy is something which is underestimated because it is literally not serious. It’s like people think that seriousness equals serious, if you know what I mean. But Annie Hall, I think, it’s such a well-crafted film. It says a lot. Diane Keaton is just unbelievable in that movie. I got to meet her at CinemaCon. She was there promoting Book Club, and I said to the people I was with at CinemaCon, I said, “I have to meet Diane Keaton. Please, can you introduce me to her? I just need to tell her how much I love her. I won’t bother her too much.” I found a moment and I went over and I just told her I had written a thesis about her at university. She said, “Oh, I’d love to read that.” And I said, “No, you wouldn’t. It’s boring and dense.” But she was delightful. For her performance alone, that film, as controversial as it might be, would definitely be on my list."

"This era of the Velvet Underground is possibly, along with Ray Davies, my favourite kind of singing. It’s sort of weedy and again without testosterone and certainly without force, it was just very, very hip and not trying too hard. It’s interesting, because did a band ever sound as hip, not trying, but still delivering? “Velvet Underground were a real staple of my generation, in that a bunch of kids in the mid-70s’ discovered them retrospectively, probably in a way that I’d imagine kids now discover The Smiths. They sounded genuinely subversive without being obscure, they were real, proper songs and there was a great poetry in there. “Often when you talk about songs to people, most people assume you’re talking about the words - to a lot of people that’s what a song is. But because I got so obsessed so young with the mechanics of the music, the production and how things came together, often I wasn’t really too bothered if the words didn’t make much sense. I’ve had amazing experiences with songs that had words that absolutely didn’t make any sense, like ‘Jeepster’. “‘Foggy Notion’ is a really good example of a song that’s just really rocking - the guitar is really hyped up and swings like crazy - that makes you feel really good and absolutely doesn’t need any serious lyrical content. In fact, sometimes - and I suspect it’s the case with ‘Foggy Notion’ because I know it so well - if the lyrics were snagging your attention too much it would distract from what it’s supposed to do. You’ve got to remember it was for young people in the 60s’ to Frug to, doing these dance moves in cool striped-shirts and cool shades and ‘Foggy Notion’ is all about that and the sound of the voice. I think that’s a great thing and something people who think songs are entirely about meaning and words aren’t aware of. “It’s an interesting thing with The Velvet Underground, because if you imagine The Rolling Stones back then, who were supposedly the baddest of the bad boys and The Beatles who were supposed to be the hippest and most worldly, I wonder what they made of The Velvets at the time or if they’d heard them. I know Dylan was aware of them, but writing songs like ‘Heroin’ and ‘The Black Angel's Death Song’, I wonder if you were in The Beatles or The Stones you were just going ‘Oh no, we’re so X-Factor.’"