Biography

Plays drums, piano/keyboards, guitar and saxophone.

He sang "Never Gonna Give You Up" at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City.

His song "Never Gonna Give You Up" has developed a massive cult following over the years. The music video to this song has also become a popular YouTube prank known as "Rickrolling".

His song "Never Gonna Give You Up" won the British Phonographic Industry Award for British Single in 1988.

Enjoys British TV comedies, especially The Young Ones (1982) and La vipère noire (1982) series.

Working as a teaboy may have helped my confidence but not everyone else was so pleased. I could never remember who had milk or how many sugars, and I had an unusual talent for spilling tea on the recording console. It's a good job the records are doing so well because I would have made a terrible waiter.

I've got two older brothers and an older sister and my sister used to go to gigs all the time. I'm from an area near Manchester and Liverpool and she used to go to gigs all the time at uni's and everything, and she's seen Genesis I don't know how many times when Peter Gabriel was in the band and when they were doing little uni gigs and all the rest of it. So whether I liked Genesis or not I didn't have any choice to be honest. When I was a tiny tot we only had one record player in the house, so there was either Genesis on it or the jungle book or The Beatles as well, and various other things. I think Phil Collins is one of the most underrated musicians, singers, performers - he is absolutely amazing, I think, and I think he's probably got a bit of a rough ride occasionally because he became so mainstream and so popular. What is mainstream at the end of the day? That means more people like you? I don't know, it's a weird one. I play a bit of drums and he is one of my all time favourite drummers and when this record ("Follow You Follow Me") came out I absolutely loved it and I had no snobbery about it, that you know, Peter Gabriel blah blah and all the rest of it. I just absolutely loved that era of Genesis and out of that whole era this is possibly my favourite track.

I'd had my time in the charts and made loads of money. I was no longer hungry for success.

There's some songs you can cover, and I've covered and butchered a few, but you can't do them all.

You can't explain the feeling of singing hit songs to an audience - it's like being a genuine sports star at the peak of their powers.