Against

I'm obsessively opposed to nostalgia. I hate the idea of it. It doesn't work. And it doesn't interest me at all.

What's important is not what I did last week, it's what I'm going to do next week. I made great records - I love them. My kids play them now. But that's for them and everyone else.

There's an awful lot of Britpop reunions going on at the moment and I find it embarrassing, personally. I think it's got no relevance to what's going on at the moment.

I know it's good fun and everything and sure, you can't deny someone a good night out but personally, I just feel uncomfortable with nostalgia.

If I could dedicate six months of my life to one thing, would it be somebody who's doing something that's interesting and totally new, or something that reflects something I did 15 years ago?

You couldn't possibly be a human being and be motivated by that.

Thus spoke Bernard Butler, ex-Suede guitarist and current producer-of-the-moment for Duffy.

Can people really be divided into nostalgic types and the "other ones"? People who move forward and the ones that stay in the past? Is this really, that simple? I though I was fiercely against nostalgia myself until I found myself obsessively thinking of the past, sometimes. Sometimes I walk and I just start thinking of people that I used to know and I just see my previous life in front of me, like a movie. I get emotional sometimes, but usually I move on. I don't sit and dwell, or rather I do sit and dwell, but I don't feel bad. You know what I mean? I don't think of my previous life and think, oh it was so nice then.

With music it''s different. I love past things, they give me such a comfort, to know what's coming next in a song, such comfort. Sometimes, I don't want to listen to new things people send me, because I don't know how they're going to be and I feel I'm too fragile to risk any disappointments. Musical disappointments are not to be taken lightly, I assure you. The reward of new music is sublime, when it works, mind you. But, as in life, I guess it takes some courage to be exposed to newness.