[on Roxy Music] One of the finest British bands of recent times.

Hawkwind are one of those bands that people introduce you to because you don't see them on the covers of magazines. I'd heard Silver Machine but Russell Senior, who was in Pulp, got me into them. They had a song called Master Of The Universe and we nicked the title in 1985 for one of our songs. We used to attempt to play Hawkwind as well. A couple of years ago, when I was touring on my own, I did a cover of Silver Machine at the Roundhouse, it seemed to be a good idea to do it in the same place. I didn't see them until the Green Man festival last year and there was a real sense of occasion waiting for them to start. They really were one of the first bands to put electronics into rock. A lot of the time when bands do that it goes down the Tangerine Dream route, but Hawkwind have basic riffs with this mad whooshing stuff over the top. Silver Machine still sounds really modern with all the white noise. It's a bit punky in a way. They were ahead of their time. Show less «

[speaking in 2009] A Conservative government is necessary. There is no credible alternative. You can sense an era passing. In no way am I supporting or suggesting that a Conservative government is a good thing, far from it. Rather, what I intended to get across was in the absence of any real alternative a Conservative government at the moment unfortunately seems inevitable. Show less «