What is your favourite book?
At the moment it's Soil and Soul by Alastair McIntosh. It's about the crofters in Scotland trying to buy back their land from the landowners. It's really uplifting.

What is your favourite film?
I very much liked The Motorcycle Diaries. It's one of the most recent films I've seen and I thought it was really beautifully put together. Che Guevara led such an inspiring life and in this you've got his human side. When I was growing up he was a demonised figure and really he should be seen as a hero.

What is your favourite TV programme?
Have I Got News For You - seeing as I'm unhealthily obsessed with politics. I would have to discount the news as one of my favourites, though - it just makes me feel ill.

What is your favourite play?
I'm going through an Arthur Miller phase at the moment. He was so much part of the establishment but never betrayed his left-wing ideology - he was an incredibly brave man.
I've been reading a collection of his work, and I don't know that I have a favourite but the next on my list is The Crucible.

What is your favourite work of art?
I'm into the Expressionist school of artists, like Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. And I've also got back into Paul Klee. When I was at art college, I did a Paul Klee sketchbook which I discovered in a box the other day. I never realised how much of an effect he had on me until I looked at it ten years later.

What is your favourite piece of music?
There's stuff from Modeselektor coming out on the Berlin label BPitch Control that's a really brutal, cut-up sort of drum and bass. They do crazy re-mixes that are absolute genius. If the played it on Radio One, it would blow people's minds.

What was the first single you ever bought?
In the Summer Time by Mungo Jerry. My Grandma bought it for me when I was five, so it wasn't my fault.

REM Life's Rich Pageant
This was such a departure from their first three albums, and it still sounds good today.

Arvo Pärt's Fratres
I was in a Japanese railway station during a blizzard when I first heard this. It completely changed the way I thought about music, and every time I play it, it's like I'm hearing it for the first time.

The Beatles The White Album
I like this one the best of all their records because you hear their vulnerable, dippy side.

Charles Mingus Town Hall Concert 1963
This is a series of pieces that Mingus never really finished. It's a mess, but there's something in his music you've never heard before.

Autechre EP7
They make music by programming computers, then letting them improvise. This album is incredible - if a bit full-on at first.