"I have a weird relationship with David Bowie. There's a part of me that didn't want to include him out of bloody-mindedness, not out of any disrespect to him but because I get sick of talking about David Bowie, what with all those comparisons we drew. People said that Suede were like a mixture of The Smiths and Bowie, when actually there are all these other comparisons that could have been made. But I can't get away from the fact that he is a huge influence on what I do, and you can't get away from the fact that he simply is one of the greatest artists of all time and he made some of the greatest music of the 1970s, and six or seven unbelievably good records. Low is just one of them, I could have chosen Hunky Dory, Space Oddity, Scary Monsters, Young Americans. But I've chosen Low because I love the mystery of it, even though it's not his best song album - there's no 'Quicksand' or anything like that. You can tell that he's shifting, and looking for something else. My favourite track on it is 'Warszawa', with its amazing Wagnerian stirring in the music. Suede's 'Europe Is Our Playground' had a sense that it was a version of that. I love the way Low doesn't explain itself, and that it's a really odd record. I love the chronology of it, the fact that three of my favourite records ever were all made around the same time: Low, Never Mind The Bollocks and Music For Airports."

"And number five, I’m going to say Smokey and the Bandit. I’m back on the comedy. It’s between Smokey and the Bandit and OSS 117, which is a French movie — it’s sort of like their version of the Naked Gun movies, but their agent’s really good; he’s actually very good at many things. He just happens to be a complete moron. But he’s a lover, he knows many languages… Anyway, Smokey and the Bandit, Jackie Gleason’s performance and Sally Field’s; she was amazing. It’s also a good snapshot of America when being a truck driver was cool. [laughs] Being an 18-wheeler truck driver was like, “That’s a good job.” I mean, they were badasses, and you don’t really think of that now; they don’t have that same mystique. But Jackie Gleason as Buford T. Justice… He has his own f***ing entrance music; every time he shows up, they’ve got this tuba playing, he’s there on the scene, and he’s doing his schtick, doing the best stuff. He’s another character, like the Joe Gideon character in All That Jazz, who’s despicable. He’s a racist, he’s a terrible father, he’s a sh**y cop, and you just can’t wait for him to get back on the screen. He has a line in there, talking about Sally Field, who runs off, and she’s a dancer, and he says, “That’s what you get for poontangin’ around with a bunch of hippie show folk.” [laughs] That is the quality of stuff he’s doing in that movie; it’s just so brilliant."

"Around the time of Poses, which is 2001, and a bit earlier, I discovered Oum Kalsoum. The song itself, 'Poses' is based on her kind of vocal sensibility; the end of the choruses [he sings 'Poses'] is this Egyptian moment. I didn't rip it off – I was just influenced by her. I would say that arguably of all the singers on this list – and we're talking some heavy hitters with Caballé, Domingo and Callas – I think she would probably 'win', in terms of the voice. She sang for a long time, and is basically to this day considered the greatest Middle Eastern singer that ever lived. And she only performed in the Middle East – I think she did one concert in Paris and that was the only time she ever sang in the Western world. There's just stuff she could do with her voice which is just mind-boggling, and also soulful at the same time. It's very sacred. I don't know if she's a religious singer per se, but it's obviously in the music she sings. It's traditional so I guess it's religious. There's a sacred quality to it that is pretty frightening, but also beautiful at the same time. She was also a real character, and not a nice person. She dominated the scene for her entire career and no one else was allowed to eclipse her. In fact, there's some story where some young beautiful singer started to become well known, and she very quickly and mysteriously died in a car crash."