Thanks everybody, I hope my answers have been illuminating in one way or another. Hope to see you at a gig.

Cancer is something that happens immediately; losing your hair is more gradual until you shave it off. They're hard to compare... Maybe someone will come along and say they can cure me of baldness.

The reason is that Mick Green played one, and I wanted to be exactly like him. It just have a special sound. What it is: Mick Green played one, so the thing itself became an object of desire. I wanted a Telecaster, and there was one in the local music shop in Southend in the window, it cost £107, way beyond my means, I just used to go and stare at it. Eventually I managed to get it. It's always been the only guitar for me. It's just so simple and basic and it has a really mean sound - I love it.

The operation meant that I'm on daily medication for the rest of my life, and have to remember morning and evening to take a handful of pills. I've become diabetic, so I have to give myself insulin injections and things, and sometimes I need reminding. I have to take this stuff called Creon, because they've taken my pancreas away, in order to digest food. So every time we stop for a meal, the band are like: take the Creon!

Yes I do. Are you really educated if you don't have Latin? I only remember about three words myself... it is nice if you're in a cathedral or something and you can read the inscriptions on tombstones. And understand the derivations of words. It's culture - people should have a bit of culture. We should remember that Shakespeare had "small Latin, and less Greek".

This is my brother. He's the same as ever, we're pretty good brothers. He's very different from me, a very calm guy and a brilliant painter. Malcolm carried on his classical guitar, and his lute, but also his painting - he's superb. A couple of years ago he had a painting exhibited at the Royal Society of Watercolourists exhibition. How is he? He's fine.

When I think of me and Lee, I think of two young people. The first time I met Lee, I was 18 I think, and he was about 14. I remember being absolutely impressed - he had a very vivid personality, he was funny. He had a dynamism about him, and he was always the leader, if you like. I just liked the guy. The last time we were involved together was a long time ago, we were both still pretty young - did that person continue? I don't know. I got the ache with them, with Dr Feelgood. The bustup was pretty acrimonious but I walked away thinking I didn't want to dwell on that - I just wanted to remember this great thing that happened, when it was good. I miss me from then, I miss us all from then - what were we like? It was good.

I did, years ago, have one of my paintings exhibited there at their annual exhibition. The other day I found this unfinished one of my psychedelic landscapes, a circular picture, and there was this photo lying on top of it, quite by chance, of me and my wife Irene walking down this long country path. And it fitted exactly in this trippy landscape, and I did start getting the urge again. Maybe I should try it again. But I don't know if I will.

The farewell tour was very emotional and great, the feeling I was getting from people. And going around going to awards ceremonies, and everyone knowing I was going to die... it's quite a buzz really. And then of course I was snatched from the jaws of death by Mr Huguet, and it was slightly embarrassing. Saying I'm gonna live isn't quite the same as saying I'm gonna die. But sorry, you can't have your money back.

I first got consciously in astronomy when, in 1979 or something, Ian Dury and the Blockheads went to Australia for a tour. We had a long flight and were very jetlagged. It was nighttime in Melbourne, and we got to the hotel, and I went wow! The southern sky! I'm going to look at these stars! I went up to the roof and there was a swimming pool - I got one of those lilo things, lay down, and saw these stars. Wow, there were more than I remembered seeing at home, and they were coloured, and moving about! Then I realised I was looking at fireflies attracted by the pool lights. I realised I didn't know anything about the stars at home, or there. That was my first interest in it.

Anyway, a few years later I was going to go to New Zealand for a tour on my own, and I thought I'd like to repeat this experiment but I'll get a bit of knowledge first. The thing that engaged my interest wasn't the constellations, it was: is the moon upside down in New Zealand? It's tricky. You try working it out. I looked in books and everything. Patrick Moore couldn't tell you. I was stood on my head trying to work it out. So I just had to go there. So I started looking at the moon, and seeing the way round we see it, using binoculars. I get to NZ, and there was no moon, each night. After a few days, I walked off stage and out of the gig, and there was the moon, upside down! I got into the habit of looking through my binoculars, and at Jupiter, you can see it's a disc, it's so exciting, and you can see the moons. This was so thrilling. This was the sight that told Galileo that everything didn't revolve around the earth, and changed our understanding of the universe, and it's so beautiful.

Eventually I started buying proper telescopes, and now I've got a dome on top of my flat roof at home, and a great big telescope. Sit in the dome, man. It's good. Even if it's raining, with the rain beating down, it's great. I had a long break from that when I was ill, I couldn't climb the stepladder onto the roof.

Yeah, it took me a long time to recover physically from the operation. Charlie Chan told me it takes three years after an operation like that. I kind of wonder, I'm going to get better for three years, but I'm 68 - could I keep getting better and better until I'm 25 again? I don't know. I do feel very fit, but on the other hand I'm 68 - I'm starting to notice that I'm trotting along. Me and my son had to go to hospital for something or other, I'm trotting along behind him like a kid - we've kind of reversed roles. He looks after me. But I think I'm on it now.

What can I say? Norman is the reason I'm still playing after all this time. The first time I ever saw him was a television show, with Ian Dury playing live on television. I flipped - the next day I was going around saying did you see that bass player? When Ian Dury asked me to join the Blockheads, one of the great attractions was being able to play with Norman, and Charlie the drummer - the rhythm section was great, and I'm a rhythm guitarist. Eventually I got Norman to play with me. I just get such a kick, and it's 1-2-3-4 and it kicks in - it never diminishes. Every time I get a kick. You have to be careful when you go over to that side of the stage that you don't slip over in the lagoon of sweat he creates. The look of how he plays, it's everything. He's so popular with audiences - people love him and so do I.

I wonder if he means Lou Lewis - interesting character. He's still one of the crowd in Southend, I see him regularly. Lou's harmonica technique is now somewhat hampered by lack of teeth.

You tell me! Playing live is it for me, that's the thing. Generally through my career, there's been times I've been playing clubs, and times I've played stadiums, I've just found it good. I don't see the people outside saying, I'm not going in there - I just see the people who like live music.

Back in the Feelgood days Rotosound would send me big boxes of strings, and T-shirts, but they don't do that any more. I don't know what brand I use now! Any old brand, as long as they're the right length. And that D shape is the basic thing that any schoolteacher singing Kumbaya uses.

In fact a whole lot of what I do takes place on the third and fourth strings if we want to look at it like that. When I break strings, it tends to be the fourth - I lean on that quite a bit.

My two original Telecaster guitars are under the stairs at home. My signature reissue feels pretty good to me.

I have no recollection of any such thing, and I cannot imagine me doing any such thing. So yes, you have a psychological phenomenon going on there.

It wouldn't have physically been possible. I don't have a transmitter in my guitar, I use a guitar lead, so I couldn't have walked away. I can't remember that.

I do have bad memories about that time immediately after the Feelgoods. I was shattered at being thrown out of Dr Feelgood, and was lost for a long time, and that band were no good. And caused me a lot of trouble. I can't even listen to that record because it brings back bad times. I suddenly found myself on my own, I thought I'd just got to get playing again. I don't know, it was the first people who came along, and I thought we could be in a band - they wanted to be stars, and they thought they were, and I was just some kind of stepping stone for them. It wasn't fun. And inevitably it broke up, and I just had to leave it behind me. I think I started picking up again when I joined Ian Dury and the Blockheads - and I could see what had gone on before was really not much fun.

If I'm talking to a Swede, I'm just trying to speak more clearly. In the late 60s it was real kudos dropping your t's and h's and being really working class - it was a revolution! You could talk like that down on Canvey and up at the university. It was just great to go to uni, I've got a lifelong love of literature and I still indulge in Anglo Saxon and Icelandic occasionally, it's just a great thing in my life. University was a kick - but what young folks do now, I don't know.

Depends what I've been taking.

Actually it's rather the reverse. I'm now playing bigger gigs than I've played since I can't remember when, all around the world, so cancer was quite a good career move.

I didn't know what this was, when I was initially diagnosed - all I remember was someone saying you've got cancer, and someone else saying I had ten months to live. That's all you need to know, really.

It wasn't until more than a year had gone by when I contacted a doctor Mr Emmanuel Huguet at Addenbrooks, via Charlie Chan. I met Charlie at a festival and he came up to me and it transpired he was in fact a cancer doctor. Some months later he came to my house, he'd become curious about my case, because I wasn't dead for one thing, and still out and about. He realised this couldn't be normal pancreatic cancer. All I know is I had a huge tumour swelling my stomach, and the idea I was going to die. Charlie realised something unusual about it, and he thought it was neuroendocrine tumour - that all went over my head. The thing I took in was that Charlie thought it was possible to operate on this cancer, when I had been told it was inoperable. And then I went to see Mr Huguet, and he felt they could operate, and he was probably explaining this to me as well, but I was in a kind of trance, thinking: is this man telling me he can save my life? And not quite believing it. After more than a year of walking in the valley of the shadow of death, someone told me I could walk out. So I'll endeavour to do a bit of PR work on neuroendocrine tumours, yes.

Half Moon in Putney, a lot of great nights down there. It was our kind of regular place - we used to play on a Saturday night there once a month for a long time. It was always packed out. But too small for us now, our agent won't let us play any of those places now.

Obviously Mick Green, who was my absolute hero from when I was a teenager, and it's always been my endeavour to play just like him, and I could never do it. I also really like Martin Carthy, a great guitar player. He's a folk singer, and I don;'t know anything about folk music, but in the 60s there used to be a folk show on the telly - Martin Carthy would be the backing guitarist to the singers, and me and my brother would watch this show to watch him play. And then he started singing, and he's got a fantastic voice as well! Wow! He's just absolutely great.

But it's a huge list - I like most of them.

One of the greatest riffs I've ever known was Talk To Me by Mick Green, around which I wrote the song Going Back Home. It's brilliant. When I first knew Mick Green in the Feelgood days, I went round his house one day and he played the riff and I flipped! I was like: teach it to me, teach it to me! It takes a bit of doing, but once you get going, it goes like a train. It's marvellous to hear, and to play. That's just someone within my experience.

Chuck Berry is fantastic, it's part of the vocabulary of rock and roll. The riff to Watch Your Step by Bobby Parker as well.

It feels like I've got millions of them, but actually I own four guitars: the first ever Telecaster I had which I got in 1965, the black and red Telecaster that I used all the way through Dr Feelgood, and the official Wilko Johnson Telecaster, which is red and black and based on that one. And I also own a red and black 1962 Stratocaster.

The little amplifier is a thing called a Lunchbox - I don't know anything about it! I've never ever used pedals or any special effects, I plug my guitar straight into the amplifier, set all the controls at about halfway, and with the Telecaster I just have the volume and tone turned right up, and that's the way it stays. It's the amplifier in the guitar that makes the sound.

I don't like effects pedals -they make everyone sound the same. When you play live, and use a pedal, you have to do a soppy little tippy-toe action to use it - I couldn't possibly do that myself, so that's that!