I have decided to adopt role of troubadour. Whether I like it or not, my album The Good, the Bad and the Awkward casts me as storyteller and a performer of (sometime abstract) narratives. Whilst it may have been enough in medieval times to cart a lute about the countryside, regaling kings and queens with tales of courtly love, these days there are myriad other ways of presenting these stories, of bringing them to all kinds of people so they can be consumed upon a multitude of “devices”. How to do this in the most effective way? I’ve incorporated a spoken-word element into this album that will, I think, not only bring the stories themselves to life, but also serve to focus attention on my personal feelings about these characters.

My album divides itself up into three pretty clear chapters, and I’ve written three little spiels to introduce each chapter in turn. The other day I spent an hour with my dear friend, the sensationally talented Nadia Piave, working on delivery of these spoken texts. As I knew would be the case, Nadia asked me all the right questions, things that only proper actor/singer/performers would ask themselves in order to...