I never expected to get the Tom Jones treatment and it amazes me that I do. Strangely it's women who throw their underwear at me when I'm performing live. My male fans tend to be quite shy. My female fans are wild. I never know what to do with all the lingerie that lands at my feet. Maybe I should open a shop.

I've always said that Adele has turned so many people on to British singers - whether female singers or just like music from this country in general.

There are so many things to think about when you make an album. Like, who am I trying to impress? Am I going to get respect, critical acclaim? Or am I going to sell lots of records?

I never remember having a plan. All I could think about was how I was going to afford to get into college or where I was going to stay because I hated being at home. I didn't really have time to think about anything in the future. I didn't think about a career or anything. I went to uni, got a couple of jobs, so I sort of funded it myself.

If people long to create a better world, then we must use our platform to nurture imagination - hopeful ideas, fresh alternatives, belief that the way things are isn't the way things need to be.

Science fiction is my way of pushing the imagination onward. It's a way to understand how the world will look in the future.

In the family, writing wasn't anything anyone understood - being a writer in the real world? How could it be? We didn't have those mirrors.

You hope for that with anything, but with a TV show, the writer and the actor being the right mix are more important than the actual writing of the pilot because you hope it's something that can have a long life.