The 5-Minute Interview: Chris Difford, Musician

Chris Difford, former member of the Eighties band Squeeze, is playing tonight and tomorrow night at the Jazz Café in London.

If I weren't talking to you right now I'd be...

Sorting out my studio in preparation for the recording of my new album. I wrote pretty much all of it with my friend Boo Hewerdine.

A phrase I use far too often is...

"I'm sorry".

I wish people would take more notice of...

Disobeying the law. I find you can't park anywhere. It's getting like Japan - where you have to walk on one side of the road. Particularly where I live in Brighton - there's no free parking in the whole of the city. When you've bought a house you expect to be able to park outside it. Now it's an impossibility. You almost have to get a mortgage to come to London these days. Bring back the horse and cart.

The most surprising thing that ever happened to me was...

Success. I didn't expect it to be what it consisted of when it came along. When it had gone I had no recollection of what it was I had experienced. It was as if I had been transported to another planet. I liked it so much, I'm in the afternoon of my life and trying to get it back. When I witness young bands I think they're so lucky to experience that exposure.

A common misperception of me is...

That I don't enjoy what I do.

I'm not a politician but...

The first thing I'd do is put a bank holiday between Christmas and Easter because it would make winter so much more appealing if we had another day off between now and then.

The ideal night out is...

To go and have a nice quiet Japanese meal followed by an obscure musical in a tiny theatre in the West End.

I'm good at...

Writing, in lyric form.

But I'm very bad at...

Putting up shelves.

You know me as a musician and lyricist, but in a truer life I'd have been a...

Drug dealer.

The best age to be is...

Four years old without a doubt. I've got a picture of me as a four-year-old on my desk. It's when fear has not entered into your body and imagination is ripe. Gradually you get to lose that as the world becomes more apparent to you.

In a nutshell, my philosophy is this:

To have a simple life and not to complicate where at all possible.

Elisa Bray