"My dad used to work in London for British Telecom. He used to walk an incredible distance from the nearest train station. It added an hour on to his day in each direction. I think he needed the solitude. At a certain age, my sister and I were allowed to walk and meet him part of the way; we would wait by the bridge that went over the A12. One day my dad arrived holding a 12” record in a brown paper bag. “I bought it for you two.” This was not a regular occurrence. “You've bought a record for us? For both of us? Do we have to share it?” The Kids From Fame managed to unite my entire family. My sister liked Coco and the dancers. I loved Bruno and his synths, but I fancied Danny. I still fancy Danny. I saw him on a reunion programme. He's still gorgeous. I can name all the characters and the actors from the first two series, including guests Janet Jackson and Donny Osmond. It brought all ages and races together. It was the United Nations of pop music. Like the Thompson Twins, it made me question how music was made and put together. How did they all know what to do? Why can I hear drums but not see them? They didn’t show the last four series in the UK. Arseholes."

"I was thirteen when I saw this on opening weekend, and I remember leaving the theater walking on air. This had everything I’d wanted in a film. I was expecting just another fun action movie, and it was so much more. I was blown away by Verhoeven’s skillful hand with bleak absurdist satire, action, and genuine pathos. Somehow the film’s ludicrous extremes were able to make a perfect in-the-moment statement about the Regan-era eighties without the benefit of hindsight. Amazing script, amazing cast, and Peter Weller should’ve gotten an Oscar. So many memorable lines. Rob Bottin’s iconic designs of Robocop and the nuclear waste victim. Phil Tippet’s brilliant stop-motion wonder ED-209, so hilariously anthropomorphized through its beastly sound design and hurky movement—and I’ve yet to see something like that executed as perfectly with CGI. Some truly great, subversive physical comedy. When this was first released on Criterion I was so excited it was getting the reverence it deserved among the other classics. I believe it’s on the commentary track where Verhoeven talks about the sequel he pitched that was inevitably turned down. Instead of simply repeating himself, he proposed a love story with RoboCop falling for a cyborg that was little more than a floating brain in a jar. I would love to see that."

"Coming to America. Duh. We [can] leave it at that. I’ll start with the “duh” connotation. It’s an awesome movie. I can’t exactly remember the first time I saw it. I think I was really, really young, when it came on television — I think when it came on HBO or something. I don’t know that I was old enough to see it in the theaters. I doubt it. When I did see it at home, it was when cable first came out. There was only so many movies that would get played over and over again. Thank God Coming to America was one of them. I can quote it from the beginning to the end to this day. It was Eddie Murphy in his prime. Arsenio at his most confident. It was just an awesome concept. Super duper rich African dudes coming to Queens, trying to live regular. While you got Mr. McDowell thinking that he’s the king of the hill and stuff like that. It was a really funny movie. So much character work. I really appreciated those dudes –especially in the end credits, seeing how many characters they really played. I already kinda knew. But it was an awesome surprise to find out that Eddie was the little old man in the barbershop and stuff like that."

"Let’s go with Jaws. I saw Jaws when I was about… I must have been nine years old. Of course, at the time it was the most terrifying film I’d ever seen. It kept me awake for days. It kept me afraid of the ocean for a while. It had me afraid of lakes in Nebraska, in case there were sharks there. I was nine years old. But there are so many amazing things about that, on a historical level. That was the very first film that opened nationwide on the same day. As far as I know, prior to that, they would roll out films big cities to smaller ones, coast to coast. But this opened worldwide, which ushered in the era of the blockbuster. So it was groundbreaking in that regard, and of course, that is something that defines the entire movie industry today. The interesting thing is that, 43 years later, the film holds up exceptionally well. The characters feel as fresh and original as they did so long ago. So well directed. The history of the making of the film and how challenging it was for Spielberg, and the broken shark and all of this, and all of the changes he had to make — none of those challenges are reflected in the quality of the film. So to me, that’s a fabulous, fabulous film."

"This was the first band I ever saw. I went to see The Who at Charlton in 1974, when I was 12 or 13, and we bunked in, and supporting The Who was Alex Harvey. And, fuck me! He had this sort of fake brick wall, and he burst through and started singing ‘Framed’ and it was just a fucking revelation. It’s funny because I’ve been looking at a bit of him on Youtube recently, interviews that he did, and what a fucking character. The bits of film that are left of him, there’s a clip of him singing ‘Framed’ at some festival, and he pours a bottle of beer over his wild curly hair and turns it into a quiff with his hand. It was only when Jerry Leiber from Leiber & Stoller died recently that I realised they wrote that song. He shocked me, with the theatricality, the fearlessness, just doing what the fuck he wanted. They had this song called ‘The Faith Healer‘, which I heard made Johnny Rotten want to be in a band. Just outrageous, but charming and intelligent too. And they did a version of the Jacques Brel song, ‘Next‘, which was just fucking brilliant. He weren’t around for very long, but I have a lifelong love of his work. Just that mixture of comedy and… terror. Perfect!"

"This is a record my mum loved so it was played in our house all the time when I was growing up. Harvest was a huge commercial success for Neil Young but the songwriting is also unbelievable. It's as good as any album that Bob Dylan ever put out or anything The Beatles did. To me it's one of those iconic records that will always stand the test of time - it's as good as it can get. There's not really one bad song on the record, it's almost so stripped down and gradual sounding at spots. There's nothing in the way - the production is spot on. Neil's singing is so beautiful and fragile at the same time. I really think it’s a perfect album. I recently saw a BBC session, I can't remember where, but Neil Young was playing at the Round House and there's this amazing performance. He's playing a lot of songs from ‘Harvest’ before it came out and he's just so comfortable - it's just him and either a piano or an acoustic guitar, and it's so unbelievable. When you can tap into songs that simple, without the need of any production or band or anything, you realise how good the songwriter is. That's why the record sounds so good - because the songs are flawless."

"Oh Jesus, have you heard that album? I just recently found that. I think it was when I first got a Moog, and I read the history of it and I heard Jean-Jacques... he was one of the first ones to use it in a pop way. I read a book about him. I didn't know that Edith Piaf sponsored him to come over to the United States. He had this instrument - I saw it on YouTube - that really, at the time, just sounded like the violin and all these other things, and it was just incredible. Also, he did a version of 'Flight Of The Bumble Bee' and he recorded a hive of bumble bees and then went back to his laboratory and spliced them individually - amazing! He kind of looks like my dentist, he's such a nerd! Disneyland uses his version of 'Baroque Hoedown' for their Electric Parade. When he went to Disneyland to hear it he was like, "Wow", he was amazed! I think at one point Disneyland stopped using it and people were like, "What the hell?! What happened to that music?" So it came back. To me, that's part of the attraction, it's wacky, it fits in with all these lights and the kids love it and all that stuff."