"La belle et la bête by Jean Cocteau. It’s the movie that made me want to be an actress. I was four-years-old and my dad had it on laser disc. I was being annoying and bratty or whatever, I was a child, and my dad said, “Hey, watch this movie.” This is when we lived in LA and we had this great giant striped couch and I was wearing — I remember this so well — this corduroy dress with red trim, and I lay there and started watching it. I had a really vivid imagination as a child but I had never seen anything like this in my life. Do you remember the scene where she faints and the Beast carries her and he has that incredible cloak that looks like it is actually the night sky? It’s insane. And he carries her and all the arms — we had these arms in our house, these giant arms that hold the candles — all the arms move and he’s carrying her and walks into her bedroom, and as he goes through the door with her, her clothes go from rags to riches. I remember that being the specific scene where I was like, “I wanna do that. How does that happen? I wanna be a part of that.” That was the day I knew I wanted to be an actress. Also, the way that the Beast smokes, when he looks at her and his skin smokes; and when he takes off the glove and his hand’s just smoking. The whole ending… it’s this weird, twisted ending."

"Who hasn't had the discussion of favourite Bowie albums? And I always go for this one. There's so much behind it in terms of knowing that just weeks or months before it, Bowie had met Mick Ronson and you know that this is a very new relationship and what Bowie had just come from. And it's kind of like the birth of The Spiders From Mars. It's quite complex in a way and I feel everything around it and the importance of that record. I guess that at the time this must have been quite a mental album for people to hear; it must have been quite insane. You know, like: 'What the fuck has Bowie done?' It's this really dark, fucked-up record and that plays a massive part in how I feel about it. I feel the same way about 2001: A Space Odyssey which I saw again the other day for the first time in about 15 years. And I wonder how it must've been for people when they saw it first time around. Sci-fi back then was kind of cheesy, low-budget B-movie shit and suddenly this movie comes out that's a complete change in direction with this seriousness, and gravitas, and coldness and it's not very inviting. And that's how I feel about The Man Who Sold The World. It was Bowie's 2001 at a time when people weren't used to that or ready for that. There's the darkness and the depth and, of course, there's the beauty. 'After All' is a beautiful song and very tender. It's like the birth of so much really."

"I found out about the Cardiacs and discovered A Little Man And A House And The Whole World Window and On Land And In The Sea simultaneously. They’re very hard to find now, the CDs are going for upwards of 60 or 70 quid on eBay. It’s progressive music, but done in a really mental way. It sounds like one guy’s mind being acted out by some willing and accomplished musicians. It’s really insane. There are loads of tempo changes. I think Tim Smith’s voice sounds a little like Robert Smith, but in a much more manic way. I think that’s what really speaks to me [laughs]. It’s almost like what progressive rock is made for. You expect progressive rock to be manic. The production sounds a little bit more like a real band on On Land And In The Sea, but on A Little Man And A House And The Whole World Window there’s a song on it called ‘R.E.S.’ which is just seven minutes of strange music. It’s like 60s easy listening music but it’s still definitely prog. I was criticised once actually. We did a trip into the rain forest in Costa Rica last year and I DJed it, and afterwards everyone was like, “yeah that was great… maybe too much Cardiacs though.” It’s a floor filler, but a floor emptier as well – and it’s hard to know where the threshold is! On those albums there are a lot of people called Smith, and I’m not sure whether they’re brothers or cousins or aunties or whatever, but there’s a saxophonist, bassist, guitarist, keys, and it’s all very symphonic. More symphonic than you’d expect."