“When I go onstage, I’m going to work …I feel like my performance is about an emotional connection. I want to connect with people, whether it’s like a romantic song or a happy song.”

A lot of Donna Summer and things that maybe weren’t trendy anymore or weren’t hip in gay clubs but you’d hear them at Taboo.

Relationship is an art. The dream that two people create is more difficult to master than one.

In writing the autobiography, I can really chuckle when I look at the songs. I was acting out the part. I saw myself as a victim.

On Madonna: She’s a gay man trapped in a woman’s body.

My mother and father were fantastic, very active. I find it difficult to say this, but I’m quite a loving person and I’ve always been loving to my friends. In the long run, that pays off. I’m very interested in other people, and if you are, they’re interested in you.

And it’s taken me the best part of 54 years to reach that point where I’m like, “I’m very lucky, I’m lucky, I’m blessed” – all of those things. I wish I could impart that to other people but I think when you’re young, you just don’t listen.

The idea that gay people have to mimic what obviously doesn’t work for straight people any more… I think is a bit tragic. I am looking forward to gay divorces.

I was about 16 when punk started to happen… It felt like you had this naive idea that you could change things just by wearing something.

The band never actually split up – we just stopped speaking to each other and went our own separate ways.

For me the most interesting thing about Leigh Bowery was the way he used his body as a style statement. He was a big guy, but, because he was tall and had long legs, he looked in proportion – even sexy – despite being overweight by conventional standards.

Personality is a real aphrodisiac, when somebody is charming or funny. I think certain jobs attract certain types of people.

The world is less homophobic, depending on where you are in the world…

I knew style and content went hand in hand.

As a kid, I would’ve loved to get a tweet from David Bowie or Joan Rivers or Tom Cruise. It’s great that you can communicate with people and it’s instant.

I was about 16 when punk started to happen. It was so exciting. You had a social depression going on in the U.K. There was a sanitation strike. London was really grim, gray. You had Margaret Thatcher coming in. It was a really revolutionary time.

You get the odd person [in social media] that will write something nasty and the trick is not to engage with them on any level.