I was a loner as a child and happiest at home, launching toy rockets and aeroplanes. When I started causing trouble in my third year at grammar school, Mum was really surprised. My parents sent me to a child psychologist, who suggested I might have Asperger's syndrome.
The idea of collaborating with anyone else was quite daunting. If Battles had any trepidation in asking me, I can assure you I had more after agreeing to do it.
I never call myself a singer, ever. I never will. I've always been really embarrassed about my voice. I've never been confident about it. I think it's a little bit better now than when I first started. There are people I admire who are genuinely brilliant singers and I know the difference between what they can do and what I can do.
When I was a kid it was big news when someone flew around the world in a little aeroplane, but nobody cared when I did it. Then, to rub salt into my wounds, the customs people ripped my aeroplane to pieces, looking for stuff.
Any time anyone says anything nice about me, whether it's Lady Gaga or your neighbor, it's a nice feeling, I'm very grateful for it. It's very helpful for your career. Every time someone says something complimentary it introduces you to their audience. It gives you credibility.
Strangely enough, when the Sugababes' 'Freak Like Me' went to number 1, which was built around my 'Are 'Friends' Electric' song, I had another song called 'Rip' go to number 1 in the Kerrang TV chart, so I was pulling new people in from very different areas of musical interest. That was quite an amazing week.
In the mid-1980s to the early 1990s I was writing songs not because I particularly liked what I was doing, but because I was desperately trying to get back into the charts. I really didn't enjoy it. I didn't like the music I was making, I wasn't proud of it, like I have been before or since.
There does seem to be a kind of split. There are those people who are more entrenched in the early electronic years, and new people who have come to it because of people like Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson.
I'm hopeless at small talk and have a problem making eye contact.
I wouldn't say I'm vain - I'm just in a job where the way you look is important. Well, at least the facelift wasn't vanity, but the hair was.
I honestly don't know what criteria makes someone right-wing or left-wing anymore. The boundaries of those definitions seem to be in a state of flux. I'm not socialist, I know that.
I just didn't make music that you could sing with a big grin, still don't.
I was always a bit different. I had a very happy childhood, but I could never hang on to mates.
Fame came quickly. I was only 19 when I secured my initial recording contract and my first two hit records - 'Are 'Friends' Electric?' and 'Cars' - were number ones.
I have always been far more interested in sound than technique, and how sounds work together, how they can be layered. I think electronic music, in its infancy anyway, allowed us to create music in a way that hadn't really been possible before. It created a new kind of musician.
I'm not good at happy, lightweight kind of music. I'm not really good at pop music. 'Cars' is probably the only true pop song I ever wrote. I wish I could write more, but I'm not very good at it.
When I was 11 I became a massive fan of The Monkees. We had a so-called 'band' of kids on my street and we'd go along to people's houses and mime to Monkees records.
Song-writing is therapy for me. I'm a very moody person, very difficult to live with. There's a lot going on and a lot of contradictions. My life is always one step away from disaster.
I'd see an old person on the street and start crying. I couldn't understand how people could cope, knowing they only had so long left. It would be like dominoes and then the last one fell and I'm a little heap on the floor. Doctors put me on anti-depressants for a couple of years.
I've got Asperger's syndrome and I'm not a very good people person, so I've always been more comfortable around machinery. Not in a weird way - I don't want to marry my car or anything stupid like that!
