Biography

He came to prominence as the singer with the band Pulp.

He famously protested against Michael Jackson's performance at the Brit awards in 1996, where he was ejected from the stage after he started dancing along with his set.

Played "Myron Wagtail" (vocalist of "The Weird Sisters") in 'Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005)'.

Married stylist fiancee Camille Bidault-Waddington in northern France on 13 July 2002.

Todd Haynes wanted him to play the role of Jack Fairy in Velvet Goldmine, but he turned down the part, citing nervous exhaustion.

[speaking in 2009] A Conservative government is necessary. There is no credible alternative. You can sense an era passing. In no way am I supporting or suggesting that a Conservative government is a good thing, far from it. Rather, what I intended to get across was in the absence of any real alternative a Conservative government at the moment unfortunately seems inevitable.

Hawkwind are one of those bands that people introduce you to because you don't see them on the covers of magazines. I'd heard Silver Machine but Russell Senior, who was in Pulp, got me into them. They had a song called Master Of The Universe and we nicked the title in 1985 for one of our songs. We used to attempt to play Hawkwind as well. A couple of years ago, when I was touring on my own, I did a cover of Silver Machine at the Roundhouse, it seemed to be a good idea to do it in the same place. I didn't see them until the Green Man festival last year and there was a real sense of occasion waiting for them to start. They really were one of the first bands to put electronics into rock. A lot of the time when bands do that it goes down the Tangerine Dream route, but Hawkwind have basic riffs with this mad whooshing stuff over the top. Silver Machine still sounds really modern with all the white noise. It's a bit punky in a way. They were ahead of their time.

[on Roxy Music] One of the finest British bands of recent times.

[on Brexit] A horrible word, almost as bad as Britpop.

Although I think at the heart of them, Duran Duran are irredeemably dull and rubbish, they kind of had their heads screwed on when it came to videos. Rather than be in some cold warehouse in Dulwich, they always seemed to have a holiday every time they make a video.