“There’s nothing like it, but it’s not as good as you think it’s going to be. . . . I was disappointed because there are records of people finding things that have been there for years. I was hoping for a shirt button, or my club’s badge – but not a sausage.”

I don’t have wild dogs chasing people with scripts away from my door. I get my share. I’ve done okay. But I usually do independent stuff because that’s mostly what I’m offered.

When I was 12, we went from Glasgow to Aberdeen on a school trip. It was called fresh air fortnight.

Don’t buy one of those baby intercoms. Babies pretend to be dead. They’re bastards, and they do it on purpose.

In Mexico, everything on the menu is the same dish. The only difference is the way it’s folded.

I don’t understand art-speak. My pictures are big doodles. I’m amazed what people come up with when they look at them.

There’s a fine line you have to tread because you don’t know who is out there in the auditorium. A lot of people are too easily offended.

Life is supposed to be fun. It’s not a job or occupation. We’re here only once and we should have a bit of a laugh.

I was brought up as a Catholic. I’ve got A-level guilt.

There’s one of a figure with two heads that somebody thought must be a comment on the state of matrimony. None of it is a comment on anything.

I loathe hecklers. I haven’t got a good syllable to say. When you come out of the club circuit and into the concert hall, they should be gone.

I don’t believe in angels, no. But I do have a wee parking angel. It’s on my dashboard and you wind it up. The wings flap and it’s supposed to give you a parking space. It’s worked so far.

I decided to stop drinking while it was still my idea.

Politically correct is the language of cowardice.

I don’t think I’ve ever died on stage. I’ve had jokes that died on stage. I’ve told a joke and absolutely nothing. They didn’t know it was the end of the joke.

[To audience members who were arriving late] You haven’t missed a thing, I was just killing time ’til you got here.

The strangest thing is at tea breaks, or coffee breaks or lunch, you forget you’re a zombie. And you’re talking about politics to somebody at the table and you forget that you have a bullet hole in your forehead.

My first record I owned was by Les Paul.

On taking office, Obama promised the ‘most transparent’ administration in history; yet his record as president has been anything but transparent.

I’m happy to have the opportunity to record the records I want to – I’m very aware that that’s a privilege.

I don’t like records that are the same from beginning to end, that are too styled and slick.

Bob Dylan is quite a songwriter, and a great singer and musician. I won’t bother with comparing myself to him, but I will say that I heard his records at a very young age and I still listen to all his records.

We definitely didn’t want it to be anything like our first or second records. We wanted to experiment more than we ever had and take any new idea and run with it as far as we could.

Even when I stop performing or stop making records I won’t stop being creative. Songwriting is a good outlet.

If I have more creativity that I want to get out of me, I try to find other ways than pursuing solo records so much.