Music, gigs, accordions and tin whistles, tattoos in all their glory, social history and popular culture, vintage commercial art, coffee, graphic novels, pirate motifs, burning incense, rolling tobacco, Buddhas red and gold, $2 bargain shops, swimming like a majestic baboon, cheap restaurants.
My ancestors, Bilbo Baggins, H.G. Wells, Mock Duck (the early 20th Century New York Chinese Crime Lord), Tom Waits (over a Vietnamese breakfast), Steve Earle, Bartholomew Roberts (successful and sober Welsh pirate Captain, slain outright by grapeshot and thrown overboard by his drunken crew so he couldn't be dangled in the gibbet as a warning), Captain Thomas Tew and especially Captain Black Sam Bellamy, the German-Australian explorer Ludwig Leichhardt, Sailor Jerry.
The Pogues, Tom Waits, Steve Earle, Shane and The Popes, The Dubliners, The Chieftans, Planxty, Flogging Molly, Emmylou Harris, The Clancy Brothers, The Dropkick Murphys, The Tossers, The Real McKenzies, Rancid, Gogol Bordello, The Wages of Sin, Weddings Parties Anything, The Mahones, Roaring Jack, The Killigans, Johnny Cash, The Go Set, Bombshell Rocks, The Clash, Sinead O'Connor, Joe Strummer and The Mescaleros, House Of Pain, Fun Lovin' Criminals, Nick Cave, They Might Be Giants, The Specials, Josh Lederman Y Los Diablos, Steeleye Span ... Gypsy, Cajun, Colonial trad, Appalachian, Bluegrass, Ska, Bawdy Reggae, Paddypunk, Celtic Iberian, English trad songs, Sea Shanties; see the ROGUES GALLERY compilation, fucken wicked.
The Thin Red Line, Badlands, The New World, Millers Crossing, Raising Arizona, Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Withnail And I, Goodfellas, Wild At Heart ... and Star Wars, Lord Of The Rings and X-Men.
Ain't got one, but The Simpsons, of course. And dodgy music shows. I'll watch ANY music clips going. The more atrocious, the better.
My favourite writer is Michael Ondaatje. And I recommend every bastard read No Great Mischief by Alistair MacCleod and The Electric Michelangelo by Sarah Hall, (she's from Cumbria - been there - and I want to marry her). Also really dig Patrick McCabe, Irvine Welsh (especially Trainspotting), Tim O'Brien (The Things They Carried, If I Die In A Combat Zone) and Bruce Robinson (writer of Withnail And I and a great book called The Peculiar Memories Of Thomas Penman). Peter Carey's True History Of The Kelly Gang. And, of course, Kerouac's On The Road. Studs Terkel (The Good War), Salman Rushdie (The Moor's Last Sigh, Midnight's Children). Herbert Asbury (The Gangs Of New York).