One-man Brand

How long have you been clean for now from both drink and drugs?
Six years and two months.

Do you still get the urge to take drugs?
Sometimes. When you finish work late or you've just done a gig and you think, What am I going to do now? Go to bed? That's when I miss it. You feel like you need an experience, some sort of punctuation: an orgasm, an epiphany, something.

How do you manage to control that addiction now?
With some sort of transient erotic experience that's both consensual and blissful and conveys nothing but glory to the participants.

You're doing a million different things all at once. Is this indicative of an addictive personality?
I think it probably is an indication. It's very difficult not to transfer whatever proclivity that leads a person into addiction into other areas of life: romantic life, professional life or even domestic life. Sometimes I've acted like a man possessed.

Is your ambition stronger than your addictions?
Yes, it certainly is. I finally gave up drink and drugs because my ambition is the most powerful force within me. So once people convinced me that behavior might become damaging to my career, I found it easier to think of it as a flaw that needed to be remedied. I'm keen to align my ambition with activities and projects that are valuable beyond self-fulfilment, because otherwise my life would be about shallow acquisitions of accolades and tin baubles when I could make it about the happiness and fulfilment of huge numbers of people with just a tiny adjustment.

Talking of the fulfilment of huge numbers of people, your sex life is also well documented. Mainly by the tabloids. Are you a sex addict?
I don't know. I think I have problems with addiction, as we just discussed a moment ago, and this can be transferred to most areas of my life if I'm not cautious, but you know, I don't like to undermine the experiences I have by putting that tag on it. I don't think it's helpful if I imply that everything I do is regrettable in an area. Frankly, it isn't. A lot of it is bloody brilliant and lovely.

When was the last time you had sex?
Well, yesterday.

Do you have a girlfriend at the moment?
No.

Why not?
I think it is because of the momentum of my work, because I'm obsessed and devoted to my work and because I'm still not ready to commit emotionally to one person and that I don't want to put myself in the position where I have to lie to someone because I'm not ready to stop sleeping with different people.… I'm not ready to make that sort of monogamous commitment. But a lot of my friends have kids now and I really love their children and I love hanging around with their children and playing with their children. And I think it would be amazing to have that kind of relationship.

So you do want to be a father one day?
Very much, yeah. But given my own family history, I don't want to do that now.

You've had an interesting relationship with your own father…
He did his best, groping through fatherhood without a template.

But he took you on holiday to sleep with prostitutes in Southeast Asia when you were 17!
On the plane on the way home he said, "I went away with a boy and came back with a man." Some of the attributes of a man included "I have now had a prostitute stick her finger up my arse while sucking my cock."

You've been named The Sun newspaper's Shagger of the Year three years running, to the point they named the award after you. How do you feel about that?
This shagging I'm doing is truly worthwhile and obviously world-class—like when my football team, West Ham, retired Bobby Moore's No. 6 shirt. To have the Shagger of the Year award named after me is quite an accolade—just to know that subsequent shaggers who take on that mantle will always, always just have to bask in the glint of glory afforded by my enormous, obstructive shadow.

How many women have you shagged then?
I never, ever am going to say a number ever again in response to that question, and any journalist that puts it to me will receive instead this boring speech that you are about to receive: I love and cherish all the people that are involved in my life and I would never denigrate them by reducing them to statistic on a government chart. The truth is, I just don't know, but whomever I'm with is the only person in the world. Unless there's more than one of them, and then they're the only group of people in the world.

Come on, how many in an average month?
I've never had an average month. If I had a whole month that was average, I'd kill myself. I'm only interested in extreme experiences.

Is it almost too easy to seduce women now that you are famous?
Well, if people sort of already know you, you don't have to do so much of the getting-to-know-you quiz most people do when they meet each other. I'm just a bloke from Essex with a terrific haircut who's been given a Wonka ticket to a lovely sex factory because of the ol' fame. I love it when I meet a woman and her sexuality is dancing across her face, so it's apparent that all we need to do is nod and find a cupboard.

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