80s pop icon Adam Ant has been popping up around London for unannounced performances after 15 years of silence. The British singer is also working on a new album and sat down recently for a lengthy interview with The Quietus. Read a few choice excerpts from the chat below.

The first thing I want to know is what's driving you to do this now?

AA: "A combination of two things. Money that's a fucking big one, I haven't made a record for 15 years. I've got overheads. And, it's what I do. I write songs, I sing, I do records, I dress up, I just do it. I mean, I've done some acting, and acting's great, but an actor will jump through hoops. I fucking won't. Look, I'm a punk rocker. I always was, I'm not a New Romantic. But I was a punk rocker who wanted to get more than one fuckin' album. The Pistols were great, but they only did one fuckin' album. Not enough! Sorry!"

People will be wondering which Adam they're getting in 2010. The punk Adam, the pop star Adam with the white stripe across his nose, the solo artist, or something else entirely

AA: "I've decided this time I'm gonna be a fucking Action Man doll! (He holds up an actual Action Man.) It's an idiot one, but if he didn't have any clothes on, even though he's got no dick... Basically, physically last time people saw me I looked like fuckin' Orson Welles, going to the Old Bailey with a beard. My idea was if I dress up like Ernest Hemingway, they won't recognise me. That was the pressure I was under affecting my mind. Then again I am bipolar. What does that mean? It means I'm up and down like a bride's nightie. The reason I'm up and down is that to be an artist you have to have the dark side. After I was sectioned, I started to read. 'Cos when you're inside the nuthouse, they don't give you anything to do. You've got four walls to look at, and piss to smell, and you can't get clean, so you have to be very fucking disciplined. And I read [art historian] Sir Roy Strong's book The Spirit Of Britain. And I couldn't really read it, 'cos the pills mean you can't concentrate on one line to the next. But I thought when I get out, I'm gonna really fucking cherish everything I've got. And I looked back through my work. I'm an archivist: anything with my name on it, I've got. And you can have a go at me, you can say it's shit, that's your view. But you can't tell me I don't have the right to do it. You can say it's good or bad, but you can't say it's right or wrong. Because if it goes tits up, which it has on occasion, I pay the bill. In answer to your question, if I know what my next album is going to sound, look and be like, I'm then becoming a fucking machine. And I don't want to be a machine. So there will be a few surprises. Someone said to me once, I think it was Jordan, that the hardest thing to do is quit at the top. When you're fucking number one. And we were number fucking one"

So, that's what you did

AA: "Yeah, I thought 'Right, that's it, I'm going solo'. I didn't want to go solo, but the band had been working too hard. I've looked back through my diaries, and I had 11 days off in 6 years. But a) we were a punk band, and b) Paul Morley, fucking twat, Mr Prog kissing my arse"

I don't follow

AA: "Paul Morley, fucking message, you cunt: remember that shared review you did of Dirk Wears White Sox with Throbbing Gristle? And we both got 'berks that lurk in the corner of your psyche'. That cunt is now being commissioned by Sony to write my liner notes. So, you were wrong. Suck my dick. You're a turncoat. Go and write for Frankie Goes To Hollywood. Or go on TV and talk shit for three hours. That represents the old school. He's fucked. He's got no credibility. Fuck him. If I have a hit, he can suck my dick. You slagged me off. You tried to prevent me from doing anything. You hate punk. So, go and suck Joy Division's dick, and go and get your photo taken with Anton fucking Corbijn, in black and white so it won't show the weight you've put on, and become a fucking publican. Him, Peter Hook and Liam Gallagher should have a pub, like Coronation St: "Ee, fuckin' ave it!" But I won't be nasty, haha"

To read the interview in its entirety, Click Here.