HP: Yeah, yeah (laughing and then singing) “I’m gonna tell you tomorrow, you’re dumped…” (laughing).

Sam and Cat, “Lip Service”

B&TF: At Q&A’s you mentioned romantic notes that you were leaving for your girlfriend. What is her reaction to them?

 

HP: We just leave each other notes anyway, like when she’s away she leaves me one on a pillow. We are quite romantic. The thing is, you can’t just go and buy a bunch of flowers when you had an argument if you don’t normally do it, because what’s the point? What’s lovely when it’s really random, like the other night Ellie brought me back the biggest bunch of flowers ever for no reason just because she thought about it on a way home. The minute you start buying flowers because there’s been a row or actually you know you’ve been unfaithful, there’s no point, you know what I mean?

 

B&TF: Yeah, she’ll know that something’s wrong.

 

HP: You know when you really love someone because you’ve just got home and you say, “Oh, I really want to make that nice one tonight.” And that’s what you do and that’s the only reason you do it.

 

B&TF: This is a recent relationship for you?

 

HP: Yeah, it’s been a year.

 

B&TF: What is your advice to people who are just starting a relationship? What can they do to keep it going?

 

HP: I’ve had long relationships where I’ve struggled and they’ve been absolute rubbish. You know, I perform all the bloody time and I think I’ve done it in relationships and not been true to my own feelings. This is the first time I have someone who actually loves me for me, not because of what I do or anything else. We are just dead honest. She can see in my eyes, if I was to say I love you but I didn’t mean it, she’d know. She sees right through me, it’s quite terrifying. I think a lot of it is down to her really, more than me. She’s taught me a lot. And she’s younger than me; I don’t know how she does it.

 

B&TF: Returning back to music for a moment. You are preparing for your UK tour and also planning to go to Germany. Any plans to visit the USA for a gig?

HP: We want to come out next March, I’d love to do Dinah Shore.

 

B&TF: You interact with a lot of fans through Twitter and Facebook. How does it work for you and what makes it so important to reach out to your fans through the social networks?

 

HP: Because at the end of the day they are the people who’ve made me. I couldn’t persuade all my football teams to come down and see me play this time last year. It’s what made me is the people who believed in me, who supported me all the way. In the morning I just actually go on Facebook because my girlfriend goes to work really early and then I tweet so early, like at 6:15, “Sent the wife off” and then I sit down and do about an hour, so any questions that are on the first three or four pages, I’ll try to answer.

 

That’s the tip, actually. If you want an answer do it first thing in the morning (laughing). I’ll just try to answer as many as I can. So I do it in the morning and then I do another half an hour in the evening. I don’t want to lose that personal touch. I feel bad that I won’t be doing Meet&Greet after the big concerts but it will be too much with five to seven hundred people. We had the biggest one before that was only a hundred and eighty and it took me three and a half hours. I looked ill by the end of it (laughing).

 

B&TF: Do you have any guilty pleasures?

 

HP: Guilty pleasures? Not really a guilty pleasure but my biggest hobby because I do my hobby as my job, but I love cooking. I love making food. I love spending a day going to find fish and then going to find nice herbs, and find this and that, so I absolutely love cooking. I also windsurf down in Brighton, so these are my two hobbies. Guilty pleasures? Sex (laughing).