Last month, the Iraqi people went to the polls, voting in their first free election in more than 50 years.

We have closely monitored the ups and downs of recruiting and retention trends for many years and have been quick to sound the alarm when challenges came into view.

So gradually, and then I had an Italian roadster that I built, it took me five years to build it, it was stolen from me and stripped. I said, well maybe we should have another where we shouldn't steal from each other.

Now, you can just get a laptop, get some software, put a microphone on it and make a record. You have to know how to do it. It does help if you've had 35 or 40 years of experience in the studio. But, it still levels the playing field so artists can record their own stuff.

I was nine years old when I made up my mind that that was what I definitely wanted to do.

I left it for seven years before going back on stage. I know now not to leave it so long.

If you're suddenly doing something you don't want to do for four years, just so you've got something to fall back on, by the time you come out you don't have that 16-year-old drive any more and you'll spend your life doing something you never wanted to do in the first place.

From there I did a one year theatre acting course in Fife, and then three years of drama school in London.

Five years ago I figured we were at the top of our game and that was the best it was going to get, but with every album it seems to keep on building on itself.

You know not having my real dad around and having a step dad made me want to be a great dad. So now I have been one for 9 years. And now 3 daughters. So, that is what I am - a dad, first and foremost, before anything else. It's just something that comes natural now.

I would rather do twenty TV series than go through what I went through under that Rank contract I signed a few years ago for which I blame no one but myself.

I have not had a drink for four years, which for me is a long time.

I got Sonny up to Harlem, and we started street playin' in New York. We did that for three or four years and survived. We brought it back to the streets again.

For example, it's only about 20 years ago the people in that community would have got telephone lines, and it would be only about in the 1950s that electricity came to that part of the world. Television wouldn't have come till 1970.

I've never written anything that hasn't been in my mind for a long time - seven or eight years.