“I’ve hidden behind my hair more than clothes. Sometimes having long hair with a fringe is very useful when you don’t want to look at people. I used to have very short hair, but long hair is my thing – a black nocturnal shield.”

I guess it’s subverting our expectations in terms of how we’ve come to expect women to present themselves when they’re being naked. Also the woman’s and the man’s role is subverted in that image. You’d expect the man to be carrying the woman.

I’m not really frightened by experimenting – that’s the main thing. I really like mixing very old beautiful pieces that are from thrift shops or that have some historical value with quite new futuristic things.

It’s very much to do with how I’m feeling … I love to be experimental and use eclectic mismatched things and put them together to see what third entity is created!

I did gardening and cooking and drawing and reading to try take the pressure off the music – just being eclectic and putting the fun back in and bringing more innocence in again is really important.

I think the best cure is to stop doing the thing that you think you should be doing and go and have a bit of fun in another medium, maybe other crazy things.

I like to get dark sometimes and then come back out into the light.

I think what I wanted to do was meet someone who knew more than me about songwriting structure and progressions and middle eights and things that more traditional writers write and I don’t usually employ.

Dad was an amazing storyteller and illustrator, which he did in his spare time – very inspiring and dramatic.

I’d love to win a Grammy! Not ambitious or anything. And just having a really lovely bunch of kids and a happy family life, would be good for me.

They say for every high high there must be a low low low low low

And in a repressed society, artists fulfil a sense of harking back to instant gratification, or immediate expression, by doing things that function on the edge of society, or outside of what is conventionally accepted.

I always think that the exceptional people are those who remain outsiders but still communicate on a grand scale. I think I want everyone to feel more free, and so I feel really claustrophobic on behalf of lots of people.

I find it really interesting that people are shocked by the raw, natural representation of a woman and a man’s body.

We are bits of energy floating about in various guises, and when we die we rejoin the big cosmic soup of the universe.

Music’s free and music’s for everyone to enjoy and express and interpret. It transcends countries and times and decades.

Exploring the different avenues and being open to synchronicity and crazy coincidences and little things happening is part of going on your journey to investigate – and the little jewels you might find along the way, my job is to bring those back home and put them on my album.

To reinvent a newly impeccable you in the most modern of outfits, don’t skip on makeup and be sure to have flawless skin and hair. That will have more impact than expensive clothes.

My hair is not really white; it’s kind of grayish, and I don’t like the color. So I make it totally white with Klorane dry shampoo. That is the best thing to do because my hair is always clean.

A bad hair day for me is when it gets flat and greasy.

I love to have my hair down; I love to have my hair full… there’s something romantic about it.

My hair is a safety net for me, so I love to have it down and full and relaxed.

I always like hair being a little messy because I think there’s something appealing about the whimsy of putting on a gown with any hair or make-up – just stepping into it, and you’re ready.

One of the very few things that I do every single day is put on fragrance. If I’m not wearing make-up, if my hair’s not done, if I’m walking around in pyjamas – I still put my fragrance on. I will brush my teeth and put on my perfume.

Samson is not alone in the history of man in failing in this regard. Delilah is still cutting the hair of man today!