English banjo players really were a law unto themselves - you don't find that kind of brisk banjo playing on the original Louis Armstrong or Bix Beiderbecke records.

I didn't start to collect records and listen to guitar players properly until I went to art school, when I'd already been playing for five years. So my style was already formed, and that's why I think it's so unique.

Although I dig my guitar playing, I think it's kind of an obvious situation; I play what I want to play within my own restrictions.

Louis Armstrong playing trumpet on the Judgment Day.

This is 'St. Louis Tickle' I'm playing. This is a loud old banjo. They don't make them like this anymore. Here. Feel that.

Even modern English people are imperious, superior, ridden by class. All of the hypocrisy and the difficulties that are endemic in being British also make it an incredibly fertile place culturally. A brilliant place to live. Sad but true.