I met David Beckham – now he was a good one to tell my mates about. I was at the launch of his new fragrance. I introduced myself but he said he knew who I was and knew my songs.
If both John McCain and Obama were given a sip of truth serum, both would admit they made serious mistakes in choosing running mates in 2008.
We are still so close, David and I. We were at a party the other day at my mum’s house and I was sitting on his lap. We’re very affectionate. And I looked at him and thought after being married for 11 years! We were the only couple who were even near each other at that party. We’re soul mates.
My mates who are younger than me are all slagging me for it – saying I am so much older and my crow’s feet are showing.
I would go to school and try to talk to my mates about music and playing instruments and stuff, and they would turn around and go, ‘What’re you talking about? Shut up.’ And I realised that I was the weird one.
When I was 16, I played Tallulah in ‘Bugsy Malone’ at the Queen’s Theatre. Me and five others shared a flat together in Blackheath. It was brilliant being 16 and living in London with my mates.
Ideally, people find mates with whom they can express both their masculine and feminine sides.
Loose Women’ is fantastic. It’s great working with a group of strong, feisty females, who are also your mates. It’s like therapy.
I am my own audience. I always picture me and my mates and think, ‘What would we enjoy listening to?’
Since I was a teenager, I wanted to be in a band with my mates: my pure image of a band.
I just love riding my bike – no more so than at home in Cardiff and in South Wales on the roads where I started out, riding with my mates who I grew up with.
Obviously when you grow up in the area you love playing on the street, and to go from playing on the street with my mates to playing at Upton Park is a bit surreal, and 15 years on to still be in the heart of the West Ham midfield is quite good going!
I was a Vietnamese kid with a mullet hair cut. I had all Westie mates, and, geez, a Vietnamese guy with a mullet doesn’t work; no wonder I couldn’t get a girlfriend for so many years.
I have the same mates I always had, I go to the same pub. I’ve got the same wife and kids and the same house. Nothing’s changed.
I was always a bit different. I had a very happy childhood, but I could never hang on to mates.
My best mates are my mates from school, and we have always stayed close.
I’m quite boring away from football, chilling with my mates and having down time with my family.
After all, at end of the day, when you’re breathing your last, it’s not your producer, director, or cast mates by your bedside; it’s your children. Keep that in mind.
It’s like there’s some unwritten rule that if you’re mates, you can say what you want to each other, and you don’t really get that annoyed about it.
School, for me, was not a place where you went to be educated, but a place where you got away from your parents for a couple of hours while they got some respite from you, and where you were able to see your mates.
It’s important not to ditch your mates when you’re in a relationship. Lots of girls do it, but you need to remember they will always be there for you.
Different strikers are happy when they score but you have to think about the team – the assist and movements which can give space for your team mates. You can never quit. It’s teamwork.
You know, it’s very easy to have a few beers with people in the music industry and suddenly be friends for life – ‘Let’s work together!’ All of a sudden, you’re trying to form a super group with a few people you’ve met in a club. I’m not into that, myself. Those aren’t your mates.
People will always see things that they want to see but, ultimately, ‘Celebrity Juice’ is about three mates having an absolute laugh.
I was training most nights and was missing out. I was coming back from school and wanting to go out with my mates, but I had to go training.
After school I went to work at a builders’ merchant in Stoke. After we finished on a Friday, it was down to the Duke of York for a drink with my mates and a game of darts. Unfortunately for them I had a natural talent and nobody could beat me.
I was no different to any other kid of my generation. I played with my mates in the park every day, every spare minute I could.
There’s nothing like working with your mates – it’s the way it should be, as far as I’m concerned.
I don’t get that much time to play, so when I’m with my mates, I usually only play ‘CoD.’
My mates will tell me they saw me in the newspaper linked to this club and that club, but to be honest it goes in one ear and out the other.
Football-wise, I help with my 12-year-old and his team, and I play football on a Friday with my mates and that’s about it. I always look out for results at Rovers and Southampton mainly, and I go and watch Liverpool when I can.
On stage, I have my three band mates and my guitar in front of me, and mic stand and that’s like your shield – it’s genuinely amazing what having an instrument does for you, it’s like your safety blanket, taking that away is really weird.
I’ve grown up with a really strong group of women around – my mum, sister and auntie, and I’ve had the same five girl mates since school.
The one I remember is going into London, as it was for us in Essex, on New Year’s Eve in 1981. There were four of us and we’d had a few lagers on the way. One of my mates threw up in the Tube and then stood up and fell over in it. We thought it was the funniest thing we’d ever seen.
Acting can be a difficult business. When I was younger, if my mates were doing better than me, I might be a little bit envious, but as I have got older, I love to see actors cracking on and succeeding. The same goes for writers.
