"London Calling is probably my favourite rock record of all time. It’s incredibly powerful and diverse, it’s social, political and has all sorts of musical genres - punk, rock, ska, ballads, jazz and dub - rolled into the song arrangements. The Clash were at their peak when they made it and the kick-off track is the most anthemic song they ever wrote. It’s got everything, brilliant lyrics, a brilliant performance, it just sounds killer and Mick Jones’ guitar playing is phenomenal, when you hear that guitar riff it’s like a fire alarm going off. ‘London Calling’ is like a call to arms, it makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up every time I hear it, it’s that powerful. I went to see them on that tour at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago and it was absolutely rammed. The second they started playing the entire room started jumping up and down and I thought the building was going to collapse, you could feel the whole place shaking. It was an old theatre and I was watching from the balcony, thinking we should maybe get to a safer location but I became so immersed in the music I forgot about it, it was a fantastic show. There were obviously differences between the British and US punk bands and some of that is in the sound of the records. The British records had a bit of a darker sound to them and that could be due to technical stuff in the mastering, but a lot of it had to do with the performances. To me, the British bands have always been ground-breaking, as a whole there were better new wave and punk bands coming out of the UK than the US, it was like the second British invasion. There was a great scene in New York, The Ramones, Talking Heads, Television and Blondie were ground-breaking at the time, but England, a country with a much smaller population than the US, had a larger percentage of iconic bands from that era."

"This is probably my absolute favourite record ever made. I remember driving to my friend's house and he put 'The Sad Skinhead' on I remember thinking, ""What the hell was that?"" When he said it was Faust, I had heard of them but had no idea what they sounded like. I remember going off and trying to 'find' the band on my own – I wanted to discover them for myself and not have people tell me which was the best record, or which were the best songs to listen to. I wanted to go off and discover Faust for myself. It was when I listened to Faust IV from beginning to end that I was absolutely blown away. It's playful, it's beautiful, it's exciting – it starts with a 10-minute Krautrock song and then goes into this weird, all-over-the-place song which has no rules. And I love that. The conviction of it is tongue-in-cheek in places, which I am almost jealous of - it even ends with a song called 'It's A Bit Of A Pain'! For me it has the best attitude of any album I have heard. Also, I must mention the extraordinary sound of everything – the placement of all the little weird guitar parts. It's almost like you can close your eyes and pinpoint where everything is coming in. There is so much I love about the record but its attitude is the most prevalent thing. I hope it has seeped into my music. It's what I try go for when I am in the studio – to try and record in as short amount of time, so that I can achieve a sense of spontaneity. I cannot achieve that during lengthy recording sessions – it would iron all of that stuff out. For me, recording really quickly means you can keep some of that playful attitude that I so love on this record."

"When Harvey Korman’s coming downstairs, before the line [about fruit cups], he shifts his cuffs and he’s very, you know, breezy — very on top of his game, whatever you want to say — he was sure he was gonna have that fruit cup. [Regarding how she got the mustache in High Anxiety:] I had been made up and I was sitting in my trailer waiting to be called and just doing nothing so I had a little black pencil. Just not even thinking about it, I put on a mustache, and all of a sudden, I got a knock on the door: “Okay, time. Come to set.” So I tore down there and Mel was there and I said, “How do you want me to play this part?” He said, “I’ll leave it to you.” I said, “Well, I did this already in Young Frankenstein.” He said, “Oh well, what do you want to do?” I said, “Well, I don’t know. I feel like in High Anxiety that I don’t want anyone to know me so I thought I’d just talk funny.” We went to the wardrobe department and they put this costume on that fit perfectly and was beautifully made. I said well let’s make the shoulders a little bit broader maybe. That didn’t work, and I had this big chest if you remember in High Anxiety. You remember that? So I thought we should put a back on to match the front, to balance it at least. That worked, that was good, but this thing about broader shoulders didn’t work. The costume didn’t look like it was mine, so by that doing that it really helped, it was very good. Then I wanted to raise the whole costume. I looked like a baby ostrich in it. My head was sticking out so I thought we should raise the dress. They just pulled the dress and everything way up. That’s what I looked like with a mustache and raised [dress]."