CHRIS REA

Rather than missing home when I'm on tour, I miss tour when I'm at home.

I feel I've had three careers in one, really. There was the 'Benny Santini' stuff; that came with a general sense of, 'Who the hell is he?' And then there was 'The Road To Hell' stuff, and now there's the blues stuff.

Ferraris are lovely cars, but I just don't want to be seen in them.

I'm never happy with anything I've done! If you sat me down and played everything I've ever recorded, I'd just sit there going, 'No... that could be better.'

The operation left me very emotional. I cry a lot anyway. I've always been the type to feel hurt easily, but now I hit rock bottom.

Once I faced the fact I was going to deal with illness for the rest of my life, I got on with what I really wanted to do.

My father's family were Italian ice cream men, and the knowledge was passed on, so I ran an ice cream van while I was dating my wife.

That is the music that I have always wanted to play: real, genuine guitar music.

I've had nine major operations in ten years. A lot of it is to do with something called retroperitoneal fibrosis, where the internal tissues attack each other.

'Course, 'Santini' bombed in England, y'know. It came out at the height of the New Wave, which couldn't have been a worse time for a solo singer trying to sell rock melodies.

Charley Patton is the original inspiration. I didn't play anything when I was a kid. Then, when I was 20, I went into my mam's bedroom because she had a double mirror, and I wanted to see what the back of my hair was doing. She had an alarm-clock radio, and it came on with this old guy moaning and hollering, playing this strange guitar.

My family is the No. 1 priority. Next is the motor-racing season.

I am in that unique little club where I went into music because I love music, not because I wanted to be rich and famous.

I remember my first day at grammar school, being the only person who was me. Everybody else was like everybody else, and there I was, tanned, in a freezing cold playground in the middle of Middlesbrough, wondering what on earth I was doing there.

Being on the road isn't hell - it's pure pleasure now.

It's impossible for a couple to bring up two children without having lots and lots of arguments.

I love being on tour. That's the best job in the world, if only I had a different body.

I didn't start until I was 21, and most people I know were 13 when they had their first guitar - I missed that time where you sit in your bedroom all day for years and accidentally you're doing classical training, although you're not thinking of it that way. It's not as easy, as you get older, to do all that kind of practice.

I do have this big weakness: I over-cooperate with people. People say it's because I'm Irish-Italian from Middlesbrough, and me dad was always like that, y'know - 'Get the job done.'

I live halfway between London and the airport, which means I can operate my European career and get home every night. It costs a lot of money, but it's worth it.

I spend as much time as I can in my garden, and if I'm not writing songs or gardening, I'm painting.

I will be happy if I am 60 because I was not supposed to be 60.

After I got back my career and my artistic freedom in 1982, my golden rule is the music must never suffer.

I actually, truly do love my family. It's not a public relations exercise.

The first time I arrived in Hollywood for the Grammy Awards, I thought I'd bump into people who mattered, such as Ry Cooder or Randy Newman. I was disappointed to see the people I'd always thought of as pop stars. They would charge around the stage rather than enjoy the music.