Depends what you mean by local. If 10 years of being an oxygen thief in East London means I'm now an adopted local, well I guess I am - although I guess I've become a bit of a Leytonstone ex-pat since I upped sticks to Canning Town.

I'm a Yorkshireman and bloody proud of it. (Cue comments from Carvell about whippets, flat caps, pigeons, pints with heads on them etc. etc.)

A decent ale if I'm being sociable; single malt if I'm drinking to forget. If I simply fancy getting completely trousered, it's "Figo" - a very potent tipple hailing from the south coast of Portugal, made from (obviously) figs.

Ruining Mum and Dad's sofa (and Mum's knitting needles) pretending to be Ian Paice.

That's a good one. The first single was "Alright, Alright, Alright" by Mungo Jerry (on Dawn records, DNS 634, pink label and proprietary sleeve for all you record anoraks out there) and the first long playing gramophone record I remember buying myself - although it was a few years ago so it might be an involuntary fib - was "Relics" by Pink Floyd (on Starline of course).

Indeed I do! In fact, "Alright, Alright, Alright" gets regular outings on the Booth Royal Headquarters Victrola and "Relics" is, as everyone knows, the second best Pink Floyd album AFTER "Piper At The Gates Of Dawn".

Brewing shockingly strong wine and (yawn) gardening.

Ian Dury And The Blockheads at The 100 Club about 1977. Went with my brother, who smuggled me in under his Royal Navy overcoat. How was it? Like being clanged around the head with a 10lb lump hammer. Certainly cooler than the fucking cubs. And thereby started the decline of an unpromising academic career (I cudda bin a contender etc. etc.)

Being taken for an idiot, working for a certain bookstore chain that will remain anonymous. (However, I am pleased to report that they have since gone bust. Ha!)

Picking up Larry Wallis at Notting Hill Gate Station whilst driving my train.

Hmmm... Johnny Vegas, Robert Wyatt, Steve Reich, Sid James, Maati Peloppona and Tamsin Greig.

Too bloody long.

More than I care to remember.

The sound of it: it made me realise you can play a half convincing guitar solo knowing five notes or fewer.

Jazz, funk, country, punk, Krautrock, orchestral music... I eat everything that has a taste.

My old pal Neil Dalton, Johnny Guitar Watson, Otis Rush, Graham Bond.... The list is endless.

This is where what protons of respectability I had fly out the window. I would say that the artists I keep looking to for both comfort listening (as opposed to comfort eating) and also for stealing cool ideas from would be Can, Faust, Soft Machine, King Crimson and Deep Purple. There are, of course millions more I could put down, but that would be tedious for me to type - and for you too, dear reader.

I was at some scummy festival in the early nineties when Nik Turner (he of the honking sax of Hawkwind and Inner City Unit) came bumbling through the expanse of human detritus that composed the audience looking for a stand-in drummer (the regular incumbent having had an elongated date with some heinous chemical). I volunteered, clattered my way through the musical anarchy that was Nik Turner's All Stars' set, went back to their van and don't remember much else after that.

The Mellotron Mk II through Ray Bartrip's home built Destroyer. (Actually two Sharma rotating speaker cabinets ganged together to produce around about 200 watts of death. There are a few people at this jam who've had first hand experience of this beast. They'll all tell you it was awesome!)

Ease.

• Drums - John Marshall and Billy Cobham (with Ian Paice on standby)
• Bass - Lee Sklar or John Wetton (I really can't decide between the two)
• Guitar - Me sharing duties with Tommy Bolin and Robert Fripp
• Keyboards - Mike Ratledge, George Duke and Dave Stewart (the good one)
• Horns - Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Harry Beckett, Evan Parker, Lol Coxhill, Miles Davis and George Chisholm
• Vocals - Janis Joplin, Captain Beefheart, Sarah Vaughan and Malcolm Mooney

Oh yeah, and Eric Clapped-out on triangle (unamplified, natch) 'cos that's all he's good for. (You never know, he might learn not to be such a smug, self-satisfied, beastly little oik.)

Every day contains so many...

Writing out horn parts and hearing the chords come out right as opposed to roasted.

The fact that it's more like a social club and I feel no pressure to be something I'm not. Also, the fact that I've met so many musicians of such a high calibre over the years, many of whom I am now very proud to call close friends.

Seeing Pink Floyd with Syd Barrett and Soft Machine with Kevin Ayers and Daevid Allen at UFO.

Johnny Vegas

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO A THOUSAND TIMES NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

1. Steve Reich - Variations for Woodwind, Brass and Strings
2. Soft Machine - Hazard Profile Pt. 1
3. Can - Halleluhwah
4. The Pink Floyd - Interstellar Overdrive
5. The Graham Bond Organisation - What'd I Say?
6. Deep Purple - No One Came
7. King Crimson - Lark's Tongues In Aspic Pt. 2
8. XTC - Jason And The Argonauts

(It's just taken me about an hour of soul searching and re-editing to come to that list. By the time you read this it will probably have changed.)

A transit van fitted with a solar-powered humidor packed to the gills with grade A+ Special Reserve Montecristo full corona cigars and Lagavulin whisky.

You can do anything you want to as long as you don't piss on anyone else's chips/bonfire/through anyone's letterbox. (Conservative Clubs and the town halls of Newham, Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest and other such rotten boroughs are excepted from this restriction).

An impossibility: if I did, it would cease to be a secret...

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