I Have A Particular Dislike

I Consider Myself To Be First And Foremost A Comic Writer. The Way I Entertain Myself - Especially In Those Long And Grim Hours In The Office - Is To Write Stuff I Find Funny.

Do I Personally Believe In A Personal God? No.

Cynicism And Defensiveness Are Two Things Constantly Levelled At Me. Look, I've Got Time For People, I'm Good Mannered. I Usually Find That When You're Down, Nobody Has A Bloody Minute For You. If I Was A Nobody, You Wouldn't Even Talk To Me. People, In General, Don't Like You Being Upfront And Civil. They Hate You For It. They Label You A Cynic 'cos You're Reasonable.

The Reason I've Gotten Into Script-writing, Which Was Accidental To Begin With, Was That I Found It Was A Far More Effective Medium For Violence. Which Is Something That I'd Always Written In Songs, But The Violence Always Sat Strangely Within A Song. And I Was Always Interested In The Way In Which You Listen To Murder Ballads And Things Like That - These Weird Lines Would Kind Of Come Out, Like, I Drug Her By The Hair Or Something - That Sat Weirdly In The Song. Film Seems To Be A Medium Designed For Betrayal And Violence.

The Idea Of Songwriting Is A Transformative Thing, And What I Do With Songwriting Is Take Situations That Are Quite Ordinary And Transform Them In Some Way. Apart From Things Like The Murder Ballads, The Songs I Write, At Their Core, Are Quite Ordinary Human Concerns, But The Process Of Writing About Them Transforms Them Into Something Else.