Paul Young
I don't mind people talking to me as they are only ever nice. Although I had one frightening experience when I had a stalker who thought he was the son of God and thought I was, too.
I was a dreamer as a kid.
When I was given a tricycle, aged eight, I'd disappear for hours and do my own thing.
I appeared three times with Jools Holland on 'The Tube.'
I performed at Live Aid in front of a worldwide TV audience of 1.9 billion but I wasn't nervous - the atmosphere was electric.
I've crossed paths with fanatical fans all over the world.
I don't travel that much with my band Los Pacaminos as it's quite a big crowd, but we got invited down to southern Italy once.
We once employed a girl in Texas to produce a fanzine, and after meeting her there she seemed fine. Then the letters started and they got strange and she began to claim we were an item. She also sent me a rhinestone cow bone sprayed silver and mounted on a plinth. Don't ask me why.
My dad was a trained carpenter and worked for Vauxhall Motors. We had money, though not a great deal.
I did part-time jobs until my apprenticeship as a milling machinist at Vauxhall when I was 16. I got £15 a week and I used to give my mum a fiver of that.
I don't remember how much money we got when I was in Streetband. It was whatever cash was left at the end of the night once we'd paid off the roadies etc for a gig.
I did 'Hell's Kitchen' and 'Celebrity MasterChef.' I was quite good at those, and did a cookbook.
People forget that scenes and fashion trends changed very rapidly during the '80s. We went from glam rock to punk, to new romantic, to flashy sportswear... and this all happened just as I was coming up through the ranks.
I was trying to do L.A. style in the U.K. and it didn't really work.
I don't know how you can hope to run a family unless you accept what's in front of you.
The availability of downloads is fantastic, but you don't know which musicians are playing on the songs anymore. It's kind of making musicians faceless, you don't get musical solos on records anymore. You know who the singer is but it's the poor old musicians who suffer.
I'm a mad fan of American guitarist Ry Cooder and he made a record using Mexican musicians, but with American soul singers doing the backing. It opened my eyes to the fact that the Mexicans played very differently.
When people come and see Los Pacaminos the first time, the first couple of songs they're in shock. But it's pretty infectious and they'd have to be in a very bad mood to walk away and not like it.
When you're playing Wembley Arena the emotion comes in waves, but in a tiny club it hits you in the face.
My bajo sexto, a big Mexican acoustic guitar, comes from a shop in L.A. run by three generations of Mexicans.
When I'm in the truck on my own I play big, open space music, such as Ry Cooder or Latin stuff.
The Prius does about 55mpg and it always amuses me. I love it when you pull up at someone's house and all you can hear is the gravel crunching under the tyres. I don't have to pay the central London congestion charge, either.
In the early 1970s, I got a milling machine apprenticeship at Vauxhall in Luton. My dad was a pattern maker at the factory. He worked every day of his life there and my brother worked there, too. I remember the pamphlets on all the new models arriving home.
When 'Wherever I Lay My Hat' went to number one in 1983, I was still driving a green Viva HC that my dad had given me. People would see me drive past and say, 'It can't be him,' but you don't get any money until about six months after a record is a hit.
I love the road.
In the early 90s, I did not want to get stuck in pop music.
I'm interested in all types of music.
Since I'm known for recording other artists' material, I'm absolutely deluged with mail from all the publishing companies. They take all the songs that've been lying around the office for months and throw them at me. Most of them are terrible, but you have to listen... just in case.
If you stay in the studio for a long period of time, you start to drive yourself around in circles.
It doesn't pay to get too familiar with your songs. Going off to do other things in between recording sessions gives you a chance to think.
I suppose I was lucky to be born in a time where I was in my early '20s in the '80s. It was just a happening time to be around.
I've done more than a few concerts on the same stage as Nik Kershaw, and I've done a couple with Go West.
I'd been really shy as a kid, I had a terrible stutter, and I thought music would be a good outlet. And it definitely seemed to improve things for me, so I stuck with it.
I was in L.A. with my wife in a restaurant, and I spotted my great hero David Bowie at another table. Of course I wasn't going to bother him. Then I felt a tap on my shoulder, and it was Bowie, and he squatted down to talk to me. David Bowie came down to my level - so gentlemanly.
I'm not a big fan of reality TV shows.
I remember being 12 or 13 and listening to 'Son of Hickory Holler's Tramp' by OC Smith. It reminds me of holidays in Cornwall, driving in a big estate car, me and my brother sleeping in the back, we would get up early and my dad would put pillows on the back seat and we would lay on the back seat while we drove off on holiday.
When I was young music was life or death.
Whatever I do, I do it in moderation.
I don't think you can be as successful as an artist like Robbie Williams unless you're thinkin' about yourself 24 hours a day.
When I was at the height of my fame I got my first what you could loosely describe as a mansion! I didn't even find it myself, my keyboard player was leafing through a homes magazine at the dentist's and said, 'You'd like this.' It was art deco and I loved art deco, I lived there for about 14 years.
Swimwear on TV is something I should have done in my 20s.
I love playing live and I love to travel. I don't get bored by either one.
It makes no sense to me at all to give away music for free. The very fact that we have to do that cheapens the music. And there's a huge effect to that of music not playing such a big part in peoples' lives anymore.
I'm a musician and I go places and perform to people that want to listen to good music.
Recording everything with analogue equipment, as we did with 'No Parlez,' left space for the sorts of happy accidents that can make the most interesting sounds.
I've always liked Iggy. He did an album, 'New Values,' in the punk days that I played to death. When you see him live, the way he moves, what he does - nothing is planned.
Rick James was a force to be reckoned with. He was an underground success here but huge in the U.S. - people used to compare him to Prince. Sadly, he had an early death.
I was quite shy of fame. It took some getting used to.
When I'm not doing solo shows, I'm performing with my cowboy band Los Pacaminos - we play the kind of music you'd hear in Tarantino films.