Roger Daltrey

I don’t want to stop and I don’t think Pete (Pete Townshend) does. We’re at the pinnacle of our decline.

You know, I was a school rebel. Whatever they said do, I didn’t do. I was totally anti-everything. I was a right bastard, a right hard nut. I just totally closed the doors to ever wanting to know what they had to teach me. Rock & roll was the only thing I wanted to get into.

I think Pete did have a hard time as a kid with his appearance. But don’t all kids have a hard time? God, I had a hard time, too. I was little with bow legs and rickets. I used to get picked on like everybody used to get picked on.

I call it fan fatigue. I went to see Bob Dylan last year, who I think is absolutely incredible, but he suffers from his audience.

Part of the early Who career was all about knocking people’s confidences out.

I love Sell Out, I think it’s great. I love the jingles. The whole thing as an album is a wonderful piece of work. The cover. Everything about it. It’s got humor, great songs, irony.

I believe I could do dance on ice, or play in a musical of Freud’s life called ‘It’s Your Mother’ – or maybe one for the symbolists: ‘Jung at Heart’. There’s always the one about India: ‘The Gandhi Man Can’.

When was the last time you saw a musical about people at war with each other?

I don’t know many singers who actually do like the sound of their own voice.

My passion is doing movies, and as long as I keep doing that, I’ll be happy. I want to do movies, fun roles and dramatic ones. I love all of it.

His (Freddie Mercury) words got better quickly. There were some very overt lyrics. Don’t Stop Me Now is a good example. He was having a good time, and that was very much a cri de coeur. Some lyrics we wrote together like I’m Going Slightly Mad, which was funny. We had fun coming up with daft things, all those ridiculous phrases. I’d say it was Freddie’s actual musicality which was the cleverest thing of all, the notes, and his harmonic structure was quite brilliant. When he wrote The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke, on the second album, he was crossing sections of six-part harmonies, and I thought: “Bloody hell, that is tricky stuff.” Then there’s The March Of The Black Queen, which is almost like prog-rock, and so outrageously complicated that I can’t even remember the arrangement myself. When you write songs that complex, you have to work hard at it, and it did invoke a lot of head-scratching. But then he’d come up with Killer Queen or, later on, lots of simple things like Crazy Little Thing. He had it on all sides. Freddie evolved. I always called him ‘the man who invented himself’. I think the talent was innate, but he dug deep inside himself and forced it out. His determination was quite something.

Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe write some really great stuff – stuff that would put Oscar Wilde to shame. If the Pet Shop Boys ever wanted a third member, I’d be there.

Every race is a chapter. Those are two important races. Who knows what Sunday will bring?

If I went out in killer heels and full makeup, blow dry, the whole thing – anyone dressed up like that could be intimidating to men and women, really. It’s so, look at me. Do you know what I mean? But I love women.

Twas the nizzle before chrismizzle and all through the hizzle.

This is just to get the kids ready to play. It’s not about the score of the games. We want the boys to learn what they can from this. It helps the coaches see where we’re at and what we need to be working on.

I was just taking out my trash and I had, like, 300 cans of Diet Coke. It was just like, ‘How did that happen?’ I don’t even remember buying them. I also like Cinnamon Toast Crunch. My addictions are pretty much the only things I consume.

I’ve signed breasts and bums. I’ve signed everything!

[On encountering the music of Umm Kulthum] I was intrigued by the scales, initially, and obviously the vocal work. The way she sang, the way she could hold a note, you could feel the tension, you could tell that everybody, the whole orchestra, would hold a note until she wanted to change.

There’s something timeless and important about making people laugh, about being the right spot in their day.

British politics, when done well, can be very fun. John Oliver