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The best teacher is an entertainer.

I had many good teachers, but only three of them were school teachers.

I was never on the side of the teachers at school. Even though I put all the work into getting the main role in the end-of-year musical when I was 11, they didn't give it me, even though they knew I should have had it. That sort of drove me into am dram and getting the main part in another production. And I did.

I was a teacher for a long time. I taught at a community college: voice, theory, humanities. And nowadays, music education is a dying thing. Funding is being cut more and more and more.

Ironically, for a few million people in the Far East, I did become an English teacher through my music.

They taught us because they wanted to pass the knowledge on and educate young musicians. It was not because they had to teach because they failed as musicians. There is a huge difference in the reasons why someone is teaching and what they can offer and what they cannot offer.

My parents were both high-school music teachers.

Some of my first teachers were incredibly tough. You could never sing more than three words without being stopped and having to do it over 20 times. I loved that - that sort of process of dissecting and trying to figure out and master this incredibly mysterious instrument.

Everybody's a teacher if you listen.

I had a friend who had been teaching music for a long time, and he knew a bunch of teachers, so I just put up the money and started a school.