All human life was here (part 1)

...they all had their say in our pages last year.

And for those of you who think as we do that too much of a good thing isn't half enough, we present a collection of our favourite Hot Press moments from 2001 - complete with links to transport you quite magically to the articles themselves in full.

Part one of a (very wonderful) series.

Enjoy!

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“I don’t give a shit about gay people. If they wanna be gay then that’s their fuckin’ business. As long as they ain’t hurtin’ nobody, ain’t hurtin’ me, whatever, be gay, do your own thing. If you take it in the ass, you suck dick, whatever, that’s your business, knowwhumsayin’? Just don’t come around me with that shit, that’s all”

- Eminem

“Eminem is a fuckin’ liar if he says he didn’t know Elton John was gay. My son knows Elton John is gay”

- Booty Brown of Pharcyde on that Grammy duet

“Do I have a romantic bone in my body? Yeah, it’s between my legs”

- Marilyn Manson

“He is nice… for a Christian”

- Marilyn Manson on Bono

“If there is a God, it’s serious. If there isn’t, it’s even more serious”

- Bono

“What I admire about Fidel Castro is that, rather than caving into them, he’s told America to fuck off”

- James Dean Bradfield speaking during the Manic Street Preachers’ trip to Cuba

“Ireland not having its own football stadium is a disgrace.”

- David O’ Leary

“One girl and her boyfriend both legally changed their names by deed poll to Dave Gorman. I’d love them to get married and take a double-barrelled surname: Mr and Mrs Dave and Dave Gorman-Gorman. I know what you’re thinking… it’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

- Comedian Dave Gorman

“I’m medium well-off. Certainly, I’m not in any great danger of imminent penury but I’m nowhere near what you’re average pop star is on.”

- Neil Hannon

“I did take a few drags. A little cannabis. Nothing substantial. But it did nothing for me. I far preferred alcohol.”

- Willie O’Dea TD

“It’s so not for me, that whole pop star thing. It takes a special skill to be a big star and I don’t have those skills, so there’s no point pretending.”

- Aimee Mann

“He would literally come in and open his file and give his lecture and close his file and go out again, so I had no… what’s the word? Intercourse!”

- broadcaster John Kelly denies any intimate knowledge of his former Queens University lecturer, David Trimble

“Most of what I said in the book was a load of old drunken bollocks. I generally can’t remember what I said the next day anyway.”

- Shane MacGowan on Victoria Clarke’s biography of him

“When my mum came in she started crying. That’s when it struck me that it was just like a public execution.”

- Michael Landy, the artist who destroyed all his belongings

“I think if you look up integrity in the dictionary, it’s got Nick Cave.”

- Kylie

“Leeds beating Manchester United in the Champions League Final.”

- Sunday Tribune Editor Matt Cooper’s concept of heaven

“Louis Walsh is the worst fucking thing that has happened to Irish music in the last couple of centuries. Phil Lynott is probably fucking turning in his grave.”

- Mark Hamilton of Ash

“I’d say, ‘get pissed with me instead. I’ll get pissed with you every night to get you off that stuff, if that’s what it takes’.”

- Westlife’s Kian on how he’d deal with a friend doing coke

“My sound guy said it were like driving past a very bad crash.”

- Johnny Vegas on a memorably bad gig in Dublin’s Music Centre

“Admit it Kevin, you are secretly liking it, aren’t you? Soon you will be singing along to the songs and you will be wearing a dress. By Saturday night you will be gay.”

- Kicki, a Swedish girl, to Irish Times journalist Kevin Courtney, during rehearsals for the Eurovision Song Contest in Copehagen

“We don’t have a dungeon.”

- Billy Bob Thornton puts another rumour about him and Angelina Jolie to rest

“I don’t really have that many funny anecdotes about Ian Paisley. In fact, I was in Belfast last night and I had to be very careful not to call Ian Paisley an extremist. People kept on asking me why I’d put him in the book when he wasn’t an extremist – which was very difficult to answer.”

- Jon Ronson, author of Them – Adventures With Extremists