What song describes you best?
“It’s very, very corny, but Creedence Clearwater Revival, ‘Lookin’ Out Of My Backdoor’.”
What is heaven?
“It’s a place where there’s no unnecessary suffering and the weather’s always interesting.”
What is hell?
“Being stuck at an outdoor dance event in New Jersey in the rain and the cold and the mud and having no access to public transportation to get home again.”
What’s your earliest memory?
“Being in the bathroom when I was three years old and my cousin telling me that when someone flushes the toilet whatever is in the toilet comes out of the tap, while I was turning on the faucet. It’s terrified me ever since.”
What’s your greatest fear?
“Wasps.”
Who is your all-time hero?
“Christ.”
Who was the first love of your life?
“A girl called Carole who lived down the street when I was seven. We would go and see movies together and talk about them as if we were 35-year-old film critics. I loved her to death.”
What’s the worst trouble you’ve been in?
“A couple of years ago. I was in a club and ‘Lust For Life’ by Iggy Pop came on, and I started slamdancing and it ended up in a big bar-room brawl. I bumped into one person, he tried to attack me, my friends stopped it, his friends got involved. Afterwards, I apologised to the man I’d bumped into. He said, ‘It’s a good job you did, because if you hadn’t, I’ve got a gun and I was going to shoot you.'”
What’s your greatest talent?
“The ability to be tolerant and patient with people.”
Upon whom would you exact revenge?
“Nobody. I don’t see vindictiveness or revenge as being particularly constructive emotions.”
What is your most treasured possession?
“My sofa. I’ve got this beautiful 1962/3 Norwegian sofa that’s long and very streamlined and it’s got this sort of dark blue-green wool. It fills me with joy.”
What have you most regretted doing whilst drunk?
“Having sex with an ex-girlfriend who I absolutely under no circumstances should have been having sex with.”
What can you cook?
“Wholewheat vegan chocolate-chip pancakes with maple syrup. It’s an aphrodisiac.”
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received?
“I can’t honestly think of anything!”
Can you read music?
“Yes. I started studying music at eight, and had a fairly formal musical education. If someone put a gun to my head, I could write orchestral score, but very slowly and haltingly.”
If you were invisible for a day, what would you do?
“I would go into as many people’s houses as possible and listen to the conversations they have, watch the way they do things when they think no-one’s watching. I’m a hopeless voyeur.”
You have three final wishes. What are they?
“That there would be an end to unnecessary suffering. That I could choose how and when I would die, and that I could transport myself to anywhere in the universe.”