David Bailey : The 5-Minute Interview

'Big Brother crept up on us. 1984 happened, but they did it sneakily'

At the Olympus Inheritance Exhibition I am displaying...

A picture of King's Cross station in twilight, and a picture of firemen putting out a fire in New York. All the grey smoke made it look like a Willie Scott movie. I thought it would be good to have London and New York.

If I wasn't talking to you right now I'd be...

Choosing photographs for a book.

A phrase I use far too often is...

"Expect the unexpected".

I wish people would take more notice of...

Big Brother creeping up on us. 1984 happened, but they did it very sneakily so we didn't know it was happening.

The most surprising thing that ever happened to me was...

Being born, I guess.

A common misperception of me is...

Always the cliché - journalists say the cockney thing and [that I'm] kind of working class. They play them up and say I only do black and white. It's ill-informed, really.

I'm not a politician but...

I'd do away with political correctness for a start. I think that's true violence of the mind. It's become ridiculous; it's dangerous. It's thought police.

I'm very bad at...

Brain surgery.

The ideal night out is...

Not going out. I'd spend it either with my wife or reading a book or on the computer, I guess.

In moments of weakness I...

I don't smoke, or drink, or take drugs. I don't eat meat. I haven't eaten meat since I was 12. I'm just a natural non-meat eater. It's partly due to the war. [Afterwards], suddenly people were eating flesh. It didn't seem very desirable to me.

You know me as a photographer, but in a different life I'd have been...

Something visual - a painter or perhaps a film-maker.

The best age to be is...

I guess younger rather than older.

In a nutshell, my philosophy is this:

Get lucky.