"This one is the opposite of eclectic! I was a Cult fan anyway. A lot of people at school were into goth and I wasn’t so popular because I was into rock, but I felt like the Cult fell right between the cracks of those two scenes. And then there was the Manor Sessions and the stuff that they recorded for Electric that was recorded in the more traditional cult style. And I love the story of Rick Rubin telling them to throw all that stuff away and to use Les Pauls and simple sounds – basically trying to make them sound like AC/DC. A lot of bands tried to sound like AC/DC, but the Cult doing AD/DC is its own thing, and it’s really brilliant I think. The first band I was ever in played ‘Lil’ Devil’ and that’s a pub classic, and if you’re writing pub classics then you’re doing something right I think. ‘Wild Flower’ is definitely the one for me, I love that song. The way the drummer [Les Warner] approaches it... it’s like, you know exactly what’s coming, there’s only one fill in it that’s unexpected and then you listen to it twice and you know when it’s coming. But every time the chord changes, he pushes so that he comes in slightly before the bar. And that’s actually brilliant. That’s how all rock drummers should approach rock drumming. It’s a masterclass."

"I love Tom Lehrer, I love a lot of writers of funny songs. I like Noël Coward, I like Flanders and Swann and Tom Lehrer is probably the best and funniest. Incredibly intelligent man and he's well aware of the idiocy of what he's doing. Each song lasts for about 1 minute 45 seconds, because it's like, "Here's the joke, go!", it's really good. I think I was about 26 or 27 when I first heard him. I think it might have been 'The Elements', when he set the list of elements to the Gilbert and Sullivan tune, 'I Am The Very Model Of A Modern Major-General' is the original from The Pirates Of Penzance - I like Gilbert and Sullivan as well! I think I also liked the idea of one man and a piano, being a bit of an entertainer. I finally got up the nerve to do that myself, five or six years ago, and it's been jolly good fun. I was nervous about it, but knew it was a good time to do it. I had a few songs off that album (Bang Goes The Knighthood) that were suited to it. I did have to do an awful lot of practice to get up to standard on the piano, because I did grade one piano, and then gave up - I'm really completely untutored. So I have a bizarre technique, but it gets me through."