Four letter word: Hot Press meets Newton Faulkner

Many words and phrases come to mind whenever someone says “Newton Faulkner”.

Virtuoso guitarist, skilled tunesmith and coolest person to be named after a cake are just three (yes, his middle name is Battenberg), but this fortnight he’s added another name to his list – game show contestant.

“I was on Celebrity Mastermind last week and while it was terrifying, it was also good fun,” explains the Surrey-born songwriter. “I was pleasantly surprised by myself. I thought I’d be more embarrassing than I was. There wasn’t much pressure on me as I’m not supposed to be that intelligent, am I? It was really hard to pick a specialist subject though. I kept thinking of things you want that’s not too broad. I thought, ‘Why not do something like apples or whatever,’ but when you go into it there’s actually shit loads of apples! I ended up using it as an opportunity to raise awareness for something and I thought Harry Nilsson is one of those characters who not enough people know about and who everyone should love, so I picked him.”

Speaking of “love,” as it’s very nearly Valentine’s Day we feel duty-bound to ask Newton to pick his favourite love song.

“One of my favourite songs of all time is called ‘I’m Still Here’ by Tom Waits,” he offers. “It’s only one minute 20 seconds long, but it’s a tiny little beautiful song. I think it’s a love song – it’s quite hard to tell. The first line is ‘You haven’t looked at me that way in years,’ which is just a brilliant start to anything.

“As for which love song of mine I’d pick... that’s tough,” he continues. “I’m going through a phase of forgetting my own songs recently. I’ve got too many now. I really like ‘Resin On My Heart Strings,’ but it’s not really a love song. It’s borderline because it’s a break-up song that says thanks for everything, sorry it didn’t work out. I guess ‘At The Seams’ has my best love-based lyrics. You know, you’d think that people would be bored hearing about love by now, but that’s definitely not the case. It’s weird, I kind of shy away from it in my writing most of the time because it seems so obvious in some ways, but if you can do it in an interesting way it’s great. It’s the most powerful, positive human emotion.”

And dare we ask how the musician, currently out on an Ireland-wide tour in support of his fourth album Studio Zoo, will be spending February 14?

“You know what, I’ll probably be working,” he laughs. “I’m still on tour, but if I’m doing a gig that night I might just imitate the Reverend [Al Green] and come out with roses and throw them into the crowd.”