This is a compilation of Want 1 and Want 2 and I’m actually thanked on the second one, so I have to have them both – although my name is misspelled and I’ll never forgive him for that!

I fell in love with Rufus from his eponymous first album. I saw a little piece about it in Attitude magazine and I just loved it. We’d just shot the first series of The League Of Gentlemen and I went away to Spain on my own for two weeks and I took that album with me and played it constantly. And through some weird chicanery, Attitude asked me to interview him, so I did in 2001 when his second album, Poses, came out, and we ended up being very good friends. 

I think Want is probably my favourite part of his journey and ‘Dinner At Eight’ was one of my Desert Island Discs. It’s an absolutely astonishing song. I mean, what can you say? I think he’s an absolute genius.

There’s a lot of melancholy in his work but there’s also a love of the joy of Cole Porter and show tunes and Judy Garland; it’s an amazing tapestry, I think. And he constantly reinvents himself and he’s quite a miraculous talent.