I had this contract to write songs for people when I was about 18. I don't think any of them were taken up; I was a complete failure at it! But I've kept doing it, writing little songs for myself.

I've been doing a little project with my 11-year-old son, Charlie: we're canoeing from the source of the Thames to the Houses of Parliament. It's taken us three years so far, and we're only half way.

When you write songs, you're writing little bits here, little bits there.

I think, no matter what, when you're writing songs, most people write about the extremes of their experiences.

I was doing a movie, 'Diana,' and I pulled aside the guy who was making the nose for Naomi Watts and said, 'I'm about to do 'Cyrano.' So he did various Photoshops of different looks that might work. I was really against any kind of 'Pinocchio' theater thing. The way that it's described in the play is this disfigurement.

I never see myself as writing satire. I think I write about people as they really are, without making them better or worse.