Quotes from Paul Young

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 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 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 became a qualified machinist at Vauxhall. For some reason it's been erroneously reported that I used to screw on hubcaps, but that's not true. You can't screw on a hubcap, anyway, so I have no idea where that came from.

Can't go on singing the same theme, 'cause baby, can't you see, we've got everything going on? Every time you go away, you take a piece of me with you.

After performing in various bands, my big break came when I signed for the record label CBS. I had a couple of hits, then my third single, 'Wherever I Lay My Hat,' reached No 1 in 1983.

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.

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.

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.

My 'No Parlez' album in 1983 - which went quadruple platinum - changed my life. The funniest thing though is the pictures we shot for the cover were rubbish, so we had to use a set we'd done for Smash Hits magazine instead.

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.

I did 'Hell's Kitchen' and 'Celebrity MasterChef.' I was quite good at those, and did a cookbook.

I'm great at untangling knots and will sit there for 20 minutes until it's done.

I'd driven through all these amazing places in America on tour buses, so I decided to take my family on a U.S.A. road trip. We loved it so much we did it three times - in 1995, 2000 and 2005.

When I'm in the truck on my own I play big, open space music, such as Ry Cooder or Latin stuff.

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.

I thought I could make a solo album, then go back to the band. But 'No Parlez' was the end of me and Q-Tips.

My bajo sexto, a big Mexican acoustic guitar, comes from a shop in L.A. run by three generations of Mexicans.

The great thing about people in the '80s is there was a great zest for life. It was a really exciting era and the people who were around then are growing up very slowly. They almost don't want to!

One of the main reasons people get bullied, in any walk of life, is because they are different. So I think that to throw kids in at the deep end when they are young is a good thing. It gets them used to other people and some of the things they will face. It takes them out of their comfort zone.

I appeared three times with Jools Holland on 'The Tube.'

I flew to Malaga once and instead of going left to Marbella, turned right and went to Nerja. I wanted to get as far away from the British as possible, which is tough to do in Spain, but Nerja is slightly less infested and I loved the local culture there and the food.

I'm not a big fan of reality TV shows.

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.