My dad has no control over who works with me. Me, me and me alone has to take responsibility for anything.

Irish music is guts, balls and feet music, yeah? It's frenetic dance music, yeah? Or it's impossibly sad like slow music, yeah? Yeah? And it also handles all sorts of subjects, from rebel songs to comical songs about sex, you know what I mean, yeah? Which I don't think people realize how much innuendo there is in Irish music.

My mother was a champion Irish dancer and singer and most of my family were musical, particularly in Irish dancing. Music is all about spewing out your emotions. A mixture of a good tune and a good beat and everyone playing their guts out and something that grabs people's attention.

The most important thing to remember about drunks is that drunks are far more intelligent than non-drunks- they spend a lot of time talking in pubs, unlike workaholics who concentrate on their careers and ambitions, who never develop their higher spiritual values, who never explore the insides of their head like a drunk does.

There's an art to playing live. It's a great feeling. It's indescribable. It's what I love. I wouldn't do it if I didn't enjoy it.

When I'm writing a song, it gives me more actual pleasure to hear someone else sing it than do it meself.

You can’t hate people unless you love them.

I hate the bloody highways. I hate hamburgers, I hate Greyhound buses. I'd have liked to have been in America during the Jazz Age, or the Golden Age of Hollywood.

Wrestling used to be interesting. There was a bit of sham involved, of course, but there was some real wrestling involved. They're just characters now. It's unrecognizable. There's no fighting in American bloody wrestling. They just yell at each other and jump around like overweight ballet dancers.

What I do is I'm a bandleader, frontman, entertainer.

I'm just following the Irish tradition of songwriting, the Irish way of life, the human way of life. Cram as much pleasure into life, and rail against the pain you have to suffer as a result. Or scream and rant with the pain, and wait for it to be taken away with beautiful pleasure . . .

I drink because I'm thirsty.

There have been many happy days and many unhappy ones in my life, but the most important was the day I met my missus, who is sometimes estranged and sometimes not. She got me off smack - although that's not the main reason it's the happiest moment.

I've been a babe magnet for quite a while now.

Everyone drinks..........Well, unless they don't.