Quotes

I was sort of, well, I hate the word bisexual, because I think bisexuality's just greed. There's no such thing, you're either gay or straight. But I've never said, 'Oh, I'm gay.' I always liked girls and fellas as a teenager, way up into my 20s. But my sexuality's never been a problem for me - I've got as many gay friends as I have straight friends.

I still consider myself working class. I know my circumstances have changed dramatically since I was growing up back in Birkenhead. Now I live in rural Kent in what I suppose people would call a posh house. But it's still in me.

The working class has taken a real battering over the past few decades, so much so that you can barely see them. But I have spoken to lots of cab drivers and shop keepers, for instance, who work 14 hours a day and are proud to be called working class.

The Catholic Church has no right to wag the finger at gay people. How can we respect a church that has encouraged paedophiles by moving them from one parish to another, free to carry on again?

It's Sheriff-of-Nottingham times: 'What do the working classes eat? Pasties. Let's tax those. Where do they go on their holidays? In static caravans. We'll tax them.' I didn't notice a tax on polo mallets. I loathe Cameron; I loathe Osborne. We didn't vote them in and yet here they are deciding for us. I'd like to see their heads on spikes on Tower Bridge. Seriously. I'd sleep well.

Why aren't the bankers in the dock? The working classes are suffering in this country. They're a joke in the media - they're portrayed as chavs and rioters.

I do count my blessings. I have had two heart attacks, and if I get to 60 that will be amazing. I don't fear anything nowadays. There has to be an angel out there. They are trying to steer me out of trouble 24 hours a day.

[on his second heart attack] I've always said I have two great loves, Benson and Hedges, so it's not been easy quitting. But while smoking hasn't helped, I think my heart problems are congenital. Mum and dad died from it.

[referring to the fact that he was born 13 or 14 years after his brother and sister] I was what my mother calls 'the last kick of a dying horse'.

[on his second heart attack in 2006] I was in Waitrose and it was like an earthquake. I had to sit down by the yogurt, thinking: 'I'll be OK in a minute.' I went home to bed, then got up and made ice cream and meatloaf, as I had friends coming. It kicked in about 4 in the morning, so I took a painkiller and an aspirin and waited till 9am, when Sean who works for me, arrived. I was so white he thought I had a hangover. He nearly had a heart attack himself.

You see things that make you more aware of mortality. I've lost lots of friends lately to cancer - and the AIDS years were like a clean sweep of all my mates. You have to accept things and realize you haven't got 50 years any more like you had as a teenager.

[on his first heart attack in 2002] I'd sort of been waiting for it ... all our family has died of heart disease. But I never thought I wasn't going to make it. God, no. Everyone asks, 'Did you see anything?' No, sorry. Nothing. No heavenly choirs, no light at the end of the tunnel.

I'm not scared of death at all. It's the way you die that worries me - that's the fear. I think I could lie there on my death bed and say, 'Well, I've had a good time and filled a book. I've done everything I wanted to do'. I think health can also be a state of mind, I've had three heart attacks and I'm fine. You've got to take your medication and exercise. Your heart's a muscle so you can't just sit on the sofa and moan you're not well.

My cardiologist says I have the constitution of an ox. Three days after my last heart attack, I was back fire-eating with McFly. The heart is a muscle so you have two choices: Sit on the sofa and count your tablets all day, or get on with it and get moving - swimming and walking, gentle exercise.