1. What is your earliest memory?
Other people have printed this before, but it's standing in my cot, shaking the bars, shouting. I was probably rehearsing.

2. What would you be if you weren't a musician?
In jail, probably. A cat burglar or something.

3. How do you get on with your parents?
There's only my mum still alive. I get on with her very well, but at a distance. We never were a family who had to travel across the entire world every Thanksgiving and birthday! We stay in touch by letter and the occasional phone call.

4. Who's been the biggest role model in your life?
That's a good 'un. I've no idea. A conglomeration of people, I suppose. Little Richard, Elvis, obviously all them old guys, the Beatles and the Stones, 'cause that's my generation, kind of. But mostly just people who didn't give a fuck. Like I always thought you had to hand it to Hitler for that — that's why I get mistaken for a Nazi — but I just think the guy was unstoppable until all the nations of the world clubbed together to beat him down. The motherfucker just wouldn't give up, he went steamrollering in! And Napoleon, who was the Hitler of his time — of course, now he's alright, he's been rehabilitated. I just admire people with strength of conviction in what they do. Whether it's wrong or right, you've got to admire belief.

5. How far would you say the image you project on stage is the 'real you'?
That's the real me. You couldn't keep that up all the time, it'd wear you down, wouldn't it? You can't shout at everybody all the time; you don't go home to your mum and go, "CAN I HAVE A CUP OF TEA PLEASE?"! That's just stupid! But it is that half of my personality, yeah.

6. For you, is the glass half-full or half-empty?
Half-full. I'm looking forward to several more tantalising years!

7. If you were to lose all your possessions, what one (non-living) thing could you not live without?
My bass guitar — and can I have my stack as well?

8. What are your best personality traits?
Probably arrogance and humility.

9. And your worst?
Arrogance and humility!

10. Do you lead or do you follow?
I've always been something of a leader, I'm afraid. Most only children are. They're the leader in all their childhood fantasies, because they're by themselves, so then they usually grow up to be that way. But I've never seen anyone fucking following yet!

11. Would you say you have an addictive personality?
Oh yeah! I'm addicted to all kinds of shit. Mostly, I'm addicted to reading. I can't do without a book. I have to have a book somewhere — usually three — half-open and depending on what mood you're in, you go to that particular book.

12. Do you have any phobias?
No, surprisingly not. Probably that thing in '1984', the Richard Burton film, where they put that cage on the guy's head and opened it and the rats got his face — I thought that was quite good. But it's not a phobia. I don't know — idiots?!

13. What do you do to escape from the stresses of the music business?
There we go again — I read, and I play trivia games on bars, when they've got 'em. I like to get my name up on every one of them, no. 1 somewhere in the world, so when people come by, they see I've been there!

14. Have you ever had any paranormal experiences?
I didn't see a ghost, I heard a ghost. We were in Yorkshire in one of those lost years, '69 or '70, 'getting our shit together, man', like you did in them days. There were four of us and our manager in a large cottage on the site of what had been a farm. The first night we got there, we coasted in through a blizzard; we were eight miles from the nearest farm. One room downstairs was really comfortable, it had ashes in the grate as if it was lived in and drapes at the windows, and the other room across the corridor was the complete opposite; it was just whitewashed and there was a table and chair in it and that was it. It was really fucking cold in there and on the mantelpiece were all these bird skulls, which was very weird.

Our manager was sleeping in a room that had been a nursery and about four o'clock in the morning, he starts screaming his head off — I've never heard a guy scream that high! We went in there and he went, "Something's got hold of me, man!" and he was fucking white, you know! I went, "Ohhh, fuck off!" And then he suddenly broke out and he ran down the stairs, and believe me, I nearly beat him to it! He said, "Something got hold of me, man, and it was fucking freezing cold!"

That was the days of seances — everybody had one every ten minutes! — so we got all the letters out and the glass, and he said, "Spirit of the house, come down — I want to know why you got hold of me." And the front door opened and slammed shut, but there was nobody in the corridor and nobody was going to walk through eight miles of snow to prick us out, because nobody knew we were there. Then footsteps went up the stone flags of the corridor and stopped outside the door — and everybody shit themselves! I don't care who you are, I don't care how tough you are, that'll do you! Then they went into the door opposite and that door slammed. And as that door slammed, a girl started crying upstairs — and she cried all night, 'til light, and then she stopped.

We were there two weeks and we never saw or heard anything again — it must have been the welcoming committee or something! — but we went to the village and we found out the story. I don't know how true it is, because things get embellished, but it fit with the facts. Apparently, a man and his wife lived in this cottage working for the farmer back in the 1900s and they had a daughter. The wife died in childbirth, so the father was over-protective of her. She wanted to get married to this kid from down the valley and he refused, "He's not good enough for you" and all that. So they eloped, and he went after her and brought her back and locked her in that room for 25 years. She could see the kid's farm from the room, so that would have been the worst, wouldn't it? And that was her father, making his rounds.

15. What do you dream about?
I don't remember my dreams, as a rule. I've dreamt about a few weird things; when I was younger, being naked in a crowd of people, the usual stuff. And the falling one. I was two years on downer and what I remember is that just as I was going off to sleep, I would get like an electric flash — upward falling, I suppose!

16. Which is better: music or sex?
They have equally important places to occupy within your life, not necessarily together. When I was living with a tramp out of the Hell's Angels, he said I was the only geezer who he'd ever seen that took a bird into their room, locked the door and put on 'Monty Python'!

17. What's the most important thing life has taught you?
That you're not right. Whatever you think is probably three-quarters wrong and a quarter of self-service.

DR DAMAGE'S DIAGNOSIS: For a man renowned for being a wild man of rock, Lemmy seems to have a very firm handle on life. All round, a surprisingly well-balanced individual!