I was a magnet for people who want to take advantage of people like me, who think they're part of this life but they're not.
I don't care much about success or anything like that. I've only ever wanted life to be an adventure.
I've always been the sort of person who immerses myself in things, and eventually you become part of that life.
I was quite naïve, a boy from Southport. When I went to art college in Leeds, I lived in a basement flat, and I heard clunking on the stairs all night, and I thought it was just nurses going to work on the night shift at the local hospital! Then I found out it was all working girls upstairs. I suppose I came from a protected background and had my eyes opened wide by that side of city life.
A lot of the early songs I wrote were about the experience of going to London and meeting rent boys and transvestites and drag queens. A lot of my early material is that: the wide-eyed adventures of a middle-class boy.
I have a long history with Soho: even when I was at art college, I came down to Soho to work in the summer.
I'm not one of these people who thinks everything in the past is great and everything modern is terrible. But I do think cities should be a mix of old things and new things.
People always go on about sleaze, but I think it's only a small part of what I write about.
Soho has got to be at its centre. It's got such a history for rock, pop, poetry, jazz, writers, all those things, and I think it should be valued as such, and protected as this centre for bohemia.
People come from all over the world to see this little place they've seen in movies and read about in history books: Soho.
On my Instagram, I'm always keeping a record of things being pulled down in Soho and shutters being closed. Every city - and London more than anywhere - has got to be a vibrant mix of all different things. We can't allow it to become a monoculture.
I can imagine moving out to the seaside at some point. I like Brighton, my sister lives there. I'm a seaside boy and whenever I go there, I find myself writing songs about it.
I became the magnet for a lot of scary aggression. Cos it's scary Up North!
If you were born by the sea, there's always a magnet that draws you back there.
When people talk about gender-benders and bracket me with George, I always think I'm not like that. I had more of a rock edge, mixed with the 80s electro.
I made a creativity out of that messiness.
What was great about the 80s was that you still had record companies who would get behind developing you as an artist. You had these bonkers heads of department and A&R people who, even after a flop album, would let you make another one.
I was very much a mess, as a person. I'd come from a very turbulent teenage life, with parents who had broken up in a very bad way, and a lot of illness at school.
Don't sing a song you can't carry off, like some 16-year-old kid singing 'My Way'. That song's not for you. You haven't lived that.
So often, the singer is the sound of the record. People think they can cover anything, but the whole voice is the thing that's unrepeatable.
Frank Sinatra said this great thing, that singing isn't about singing in tune, or great technical singing. It's about making people believe in the story you're telling.
I've got so much I want to do, and not a lot of time to do it in. People say to me, "You really shouldn't do so many records", because it actually harms your career.
I thought, I might not look my best, I've forgotten half the words to my songs and I'm suffering from post-traumatic stress, but I've just got to get out there and do it.
Sometimes I ask myself, "Should I be out in a club?" But it's about realising I don't need to be always chasing after being who I was 20 or 30 years ago.
I liked the idea of writing a song saying I'm happy with who I am, and I don't mind if people think I'm some old git.
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