You know, where have you - what have you been doing? You know, and you find yourself sitting next to Jesus, and he's rather an agreeable man. And you have an opportunity to say, so what went down then, you know, that night? And it's supposed to be like him just sort of telling you very conversationally. That was the idea I had. Whether it - whether it comes - came off or not, I don't know.
I don't have the faith now. I certainly believe in Jesus - you know, that he existed and he was a very nice man. And who can disagree with a simple philosophy of treat other people like you'd like to be treated yourself? It's absolutely - nothing I can disagree with that.
I use the name and the thought very, very easily as a sort of comfort - as a kind of comfort, in some way. And in that way, it's just like having a friend, I suppose.
I loved Christmas. We had a really great time. But there wasn't - it was all - you had to be happy with, you know, an orange and a couple of walnuts, you know, in your stocking.
The older I get, the more I think it's this listening. You listen for it, and you have a bit of patience. And it'll come until it sounds - to me, the best songs I've written, I think, are ones that I can't hear anything - any of myself in it. It sounds like a cover song, like somebody else's song - really something you've stolen wholesale off a radio that you've listened to in someone else's flat.
I think the best songs that come to me are ones that you sort of listen for. The ones - when I listen to some of my old stuff, I can tell when I had a good idea, but I forced it through, and I can hear myself - the bit that I've written, which sounds clunkier than the stuff that just sort of comes.
I felt that in order to do what I wanted to do, I had to do certain things, and one of them was to have a hit in my own right. At least one.
There's really never any sort of master plan. I find if I've got a couple of tunes that I think are possibilities, I phone everyone up and get them into the studio and we'll have a go at recording them.
I'm still kind of a hapless character in my everyday life. But when it comes to the writing, my influences are very old influences. I love American music of absolutely all stripes, including show tunes, advertising jingles, theme tunes from quiz shows, all kinds of American music.
Well, this is shortly after the idea was put to me because it wasn't my idea to do a Christmas record. We can talk about that a little bit, if you like, later on. But I wrote that song actually about two days after the idea was put to me.
I found myself in Zurich Airport. I'd done a TV show, oddly enough, with Mavis Staples. That's the way they do it in Switzerland. And I'd had a bit of a late night with members of her band. And I was - my flight was delayed. And I was sitting in the airport, and I just came up with the idea. And by the time, we landed at Heathrow, I'd pretty much sort of got it.
The idea was put to me, and my initial reaction was of slight sort of - I was slightly appalled, really, because in the U.K., we don't - we think it's all a bit vulgar, you know, doing Christmas or cashing in on Christmas. And there's a word we have for it, which is naff. And it's not exactly uncool. It really sort of means kind of vulgar and a bit - not very stylish.
To a certain extent, yes, we do. But there's - but there's a very limited menu. There's only about sort of 20 songs that you hear on rotation.
It's like a little folk song. I think it might've been Harry Belafonte or someone like that who did it. And "Merry Christmas, Everybody" by Slade, which is a rock group - a rock-pop group who are very big over there.
I knew how the suits used to talk about the artists, with barely concealed contempt. So I knew what was waiting for me round the corner. Because I wasn't one of those very unusual people like Neil Diamond or Elton John, whose careers just seem to span the decades. I knew I wasn't one of them.
You want to sing this song. And so it goes on until eventually, after - well, however long it can take - sometimes a few days, sometimes months - you piece the whole thing together.
I mean, the way I'm talking, it sounds like I'm - you know, I'm about to go out and sign up for the nearest seminary, and you'll never see or hear from me again. But it's a hard thing to talk about really 'cause I'm not at all sure myself about it. But I've got a very, very simple sort of outlook to it. Yeah, that's all I can say, really.
