Musician

I have a distinct memory of friends I had at school whose parents were, for want of a better word, bohemian. That was the kind of England that I thought I should have belonged to.

In the early days of the Libertines, we used to put on Arcadian cabaret nights. There'd be some girl climbing out of an egg; we'd try and get a couple of mates to tell a few jokes, performance poets, and then we'd play in the middle of it all. More people were on stage than in the crowd.

It's amazing, the number of people who don't have passports, who can't read, who can't write. It's sick actually. It's disgusting.

If Oasis is the sound of a council estate singing its heart out, then the Libertines sounded like someone just putting something in the rubbish chute at the back of the estate, trying to work out what day it is.

I've never actually learnt scales. I should someday.

I think I'm really quite horrible to myself in many ways.

I don't know; we'll see what happens with Brexit. If they make it so that you can't travel any more without a visa, I'm going to have to leave the country, stay in the E.U., and probably change my citizenship.

There's no drug in the world that can compare with playing music.

Babyshambles were offered some money to have a comeback. Good band, they were - amazing tunes.

When you're young and idealistic, you don't care: you'll play to no one, in your bedroom - like kids with football - you'll play anywhere; you just love the music. And then, bang - soon as you're in the industry, you think that's the dream. But that's when the dream starts to end.

When I was 16, walking down Oxford Street, I saw Ian Brown. I said, 'Are you Ian Brown?' He said no and walked off, but I am sure it was him.

If you don't wash your hair, it cleans itself. That applies to the human body as well.

For a little while, maybe I did fall for my own mythology.

I never went to school in England until I was 12.

The fact that I'm obviously well enough to be playing - in fine fettle and fine singing voice, yet I am not playing with The Libertines - is a sore point.

No, I never surround myself with people I hate.

I just wanted to get on telly. I wasn't a massive Oasis fan, but I had to be in order to get on the telly.

The media circus got a bit twisted when I was in London. It became a bit of a joke, really. In Paris, they're so serious, I can take myself really seriously, too. I can get really morbid without people telling me to cheer up.

It was always my ambition to be on the cover of a free gay magazine.

Every day I wake up in Paris, it's real tranquillity. No pressure. I'm out of the grasp of people. I don't have a phone, and I drift a little bit.