"This is another case of, "Where's my Radiohead gone?" Hearing Muse for the first time was like, "Holy shit, this is like Radiohead, but heavier, and more pop, but also darker as well", and I just absolutely fell for it, hook, line and sinker. I was at the perfect age, was just getting into actually being good at playing stuff, and Matt Bellamy was all over the place in terms of his musical talents, playing the piano and guitar, and stuff that teenagers love. Stuff that sounds flashy and complex and twiddly but is actually not. And the bass player! Fuck me, the basslines on the album! Bass players don't do that kind of stuff! He's the sort of main character in an awful lot of those songs. It was an absolute revelation. I was a bass player before I was anything else, and I remember thinking, "Holy shit that sounded ace"! They ripped up the rulebook in so many ways for rock music. It was so enjoyable as well. Every song had a real sense of performance and razzmatazz. Of course it's called Showbiz and it is a type of show. So I think, more than anything, that's probably what you would say about my band, particularly live - we're not subtle, it's over the top. Whether people like it or not, that's got into us now and it's hard to take a step back."

"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."