“All I ever wanted to do was make a record. Here's what you do: you pick up your guitar, you rip a few people's tunes off, you swap them round a bit, get your brother in the band, punch his head in every now and again, and it sells. I'm a lucky bastard. I'm probably the single most lucky man in the world -- apart from our Liam.”

“I've always been into guitars... we want to put keyboards on, but keyboard players don't look cool onstage, they just keep their heads down. There has never been a cool keyboard player, apart from Elton John.”

“If I were in the Beatles, I'd be a good George Harrison.”

“When we started off, we wanted the girls, the cocaine, the fur coats. It wasn't like it was an act; it was almost like working-class people winning the pools. We went bananas.”