"“I really relate to the particular type of mental instability that Dostoyevsky describes in pretty much all of his work. A character starts talking, and things start getting out of control and become increasingly animated, intense and disturbing. It reads like an extreme version of how I feel whenever I have to interact with humans. The Idiot is probably my favourite of his works, because I love Nastasya Filipovna, Aglaya Ivanovna Epanchin, Rogozhin… I think a lot of my friends think I’m a bit like Nastasya! Anyway, it’s the most cartoonish and absurd of everything I’ve read by Dostoyevsky, and the best distillation of insanity as a virtue. A Baz Luhrmann-esque treatment of this book would make an incredible film.”"

"Braveheart was another one that sort of encapsulates a lot of themes, and it’s very cinematic, it’s beautiful. I love the simplicity of that world, I’m a cowboy at heart. And I just love the idea of sort of, like, meat and hands and dirt and filth. I think the action was tremendous and violent and brutal. I thought the love story was delicate and romantic and beautiful and deeply felt. I love the sort of underdog themes: every man in his circumstance, these are things that sort of run deep in my body. The performances were great. I feel like if I was born in another era, it would be in that time or it’s a time I would like to be in. Really, really fantastic."

"Okay, I will pick a film with Bowie in it. [laughs] I’m going to say The Last Temptation of Christ, where he plays Pilate. All the Romans are English, and all the Jews are American. [laughs] I think it’s just a perfect piece of filmmaking. It’s brave and it’s imaginative and it’s about the most kind of profound things, and yet it’s very human. And the music — Peter Gabriel’s soundtrack is incredible. Again, every time I watch it… it’s the same with a lot of Scorsese’s films — as soon as you turn the channel and come across one, no matter how many times you’ve seen it, you sort of can’t stop watching it, because he’s a master story teller. That’s my five for today."

"Niggaz4Life is just… both the De La Soul albums had a cinematic quality to them, you can see those songs. With that being said, [on this album] Dr Dre had this sonic brilliance and pristine gangster music that just sounded brilliant. And it was orchestrated and sequenced very brilliantly, too. It seems like an awful lot of thought went into it. To me, it wasn't Gangsta with an 'a', it was Gangster with an 'er' - with a suit and tie. This is the business gangster; this isn't hold your gun sideways, this is Scorcese. Ice Cube not being there for this album was part of the appeal; everyone wanted to know what they'd be able to achieve without him. And it's a triumph."

"Again, it's all about the outsider and making the ugly beautiful, which John Waters is very well placed to deal with. It's also about a very particular place, which is Baltimore, and about a particular pop culture moment: the early sixties, just before The Beatles hit, which is a forgotten time and much more interesting than everybody thinks. People often go with that Nik Cohn line that there's nothing interesting before The Beatles, which is absolute bullshit: I love all those songs like 'The Bug' and 'The Madison'. It's got Debbie Harry in it and it's got Divine of course, who's as wonderful as ever. What's not to like? It has a lot of charm and is fascinating on a number of levels."

"OK, maybe I’m cheating here. I know this is off Blood On The Tracks, but it’s my all-time favourite song. It’s one of those songs where the lyrics are ambiguous you can actually write the song yourself. That’s a lot of fun – it’s like Dylan fooling around with the listener, playing on the way he or she interprets the lyrics. “It’s very hard to take individual songs off Blood On the Tracks, because itworks so well as an entire album. I used to think ‘If You See Her, Say Hello’ was a more powerful song than ‘Tangled Up In Blue’ but, over the years I’ve kinda realized ‘Tangled…’ has the edge, just for the fun you can have with it."