What do you wish you'd known when you were starting out?
That it's more important to be great songwriters than a great live band - you can pick up being a good live band if you get the resources to tour from being good songwriters/recording artists. Although I don't regret a thing, as Edith Piaf sings...

Did you ever consider packing it all in?
Two years ago I did - just before we got a record deal! We'd been signed to a production deal but the deal was screwy and it looked like we were paralysed indefinitely. I just thought to myself, what the fuck have I done with my life? Twenty five years down the line and no album to even show for it.

If you weren't a proper pop star, what would you be doing now?
I don't know that I am a proper pop star!? I really believe that these are the things you will never truly know until you die. In the afterlife, someone who looks and talks a lot like Stephen Fry will give you a rundown of all of the possible forks of your life that you could have pursued and what you could have lost or gained as a result and it will be witty and funny and we will laugh and drink tea, lounging on leather sofas with the smell of cigar smoke in the air and the sound of a string quartet blaring from the nearby Victrola.

Can you explain how you celebrated on the day you got signed?
We ate a very expensive curry then played a gig. There wasn't anything elaborate about it really. I didn't wake up with the taste of lung and marmalade in my mouth in the morning and no-one died.

Who would be your dream support act?
Bill Hicks.

What's the best advice you've ever been given?
Learn how to sing and play rhythm guitar.

Now read interviews with the other stars of the New Music Month ads:

Patrick Wolf
Unklejam
Lady Sovereign
Bat For Lashes
Corinne Bailey Rae
Tracey Thorn