When I was 17, I worked in a warehouse in Rotherham doing an audit of truck parts. I counted nuts and bolts all day long.

I worked in a call centre. I would go clubbing on a Saturday with my brother and my mates, get home for five or six in the morning, and then have to be at work at 8am.

There have been things within the Kaiser Chiefs I’ve hated – some corporate gigs that I didn’t feel good doing.

There was a period in the early 2000s when I had been doing celebrity profiles and thought I’d lost my way creatively.

My kids, and getting some of the stories I had in my head on to paper in a way that wasn’t too far removed from the thing I dreamed about writing.

And when things get tough, this is what you should do. Make good art. I’m serious. Husband runs off with a politician? Make good art. Leg crushed and then eaten by mutated boa constrictor? Make good art. IRS on your trail? Make good art. Cat exploded? Make good art. Somebody on the Internet thinks what you do is stupid or evil or it’s all been done before? Make good art. Probably things will work out somehow, and eventually time will take the sting away, but that doesn’t matter. Do what only you do best. Make good art.

Imaginative, dull, amiable.

I’ve never read Proust.

Mostly the pain. I don’t want to be trapped in a body that hurts.

I like the idea of being atoms that other people can breathe in, and fabulous worm food.