I have a lettuce in the fridge. I don't have any fetishes in the fridge, though. I don't really have any fetishes. I'm so fucking boring it's untrue

Do you believe in ghosts?

Have you seen that programme Most Haunted? It's like, "Let's shoot in nightcam and make it look scary! And have somebody kick a door! It's a fucking fly! It's a midge! It's a bloody moth!" Get over it. I don't mind the idea of ghosts existing, but why do they only select certain people? Why do those certain people never convince the rest of us they've caught one on film? I think if there was a real ghost they'd come out and dance around and say, "Look, this is me carrying my own head under my arm and dangling chains!" It's all a little romantic and fun, but if one walked into my house I'd be like, "Sit down. Who killed you? Why? What happened? Why are you dead?" They don't scare me.

*When you die, if you have the ability to be a ghost, are you going be the world's first publicity-seeking spectre?  

I'd definitely come back - I'd love that. I'd just walk on News At Ten and go "Boo!" and see what the guy did. It would be great fun.

*I can't wait. 

Me neither. I'm not going to kill myself tomorrow just so I can do it.

*It'll be a sad day when you go, but it'll be tempered with the joy of seeing you on News At Ten. Got any fetishes?

Do I have any what?

*Do you have any fetishes?

I thought asked if I had any lettuces! I have a lettuce in the fridge. I don't have any fetishes in the fridge, though. I don't really have any fetishes. I'm so fucking boring it's untrue. 

*Do you have any recurring dreams?

Not really. I have weird dreams, though. Mad dreams that I just can't explain.

*Go on...

OK. I'm sharing an elevator with Rod Stewart for seven hours. He's wearing a white suit and looking like Don Johnson. Where the fuck is it going? We're like 19 billion floors up or something.

*Do you have any phobias?

I've inherited my father's vertigo. These days I'm scared of heights, but I used to have a fear of dying.

*When did that stop?

I don't think it did, I just don't think about it much now. How many times can you get in an aeroplane and think, "What happens if this falls out of the sky?" You'd never get in one again. You've got to put those fears on the back burner. If you're at 30,000ft and suddenly start plummeting towards Earth, the romantic idea of grabbing the stewardess and giving her a damn good rogering over the pilot's chair isn't going to happen. Everybody's going to piss their pants, and it's going to be an awful five minutes until it hits some mountain. The idea of being taken out like - BOOM! - that suits me better. Then I could see if there really are ghosts. 

*What's the closest to death you've ever come?

In 2003, there was a newspaper report that I'd died in a private plane crash in Denver. That was pretty close. I've no idea where it came from. I just remember getting a phonecall from a friend saying, "Did you know you're dead?" Maybe it was someone else with the name Joseph Elliott, and some idiot didn't think to check to see if there was another person with the same name on the planet. As regards physically being close to death, every time I drive past another car at about 80mph and our wing mirrors catch, I often think that if just one of us was bending into the footwell of the passenger seat to change CDs, then neither of us would be here right now. I'm a very boring, careful driver. It's only when you do get your wing mirror clipped that you think, "Christ, I was doing 45mph - if he was as well, then that's 90mph and would make for a pretty flat person, a mangle - tin-opener time, basically."  

*If you could have one superpower, what would it be?

I'd like to be immortal, but I'd also want to my partner to live forever because there's no point in me staying the same and her getting old - that's what ruined Highlander. I'd want to stay at a certain age and not get any older-looking. It's never going to work, though, because people would work out that I had a bank account for 700 years, but I suppose I'd have to figure out a way around that.

*If you had to have sex with an animal, what would it be?

That's a crap question.

*It's not my question, I just ask them.

So that makes it OK to ask? That's like Gary Glitter saying, "It's not my fault that I'm a paedophile. I was born like this."

*I like to think they're slightly different...

Yes, indeed. Sex with an animal? It would be my wife.

*What are you saying about her?

She's an animal.

*In what sense?

In the sack. I'm not going in print with a goldfish or gorilla.

*You've just come close...

I'm just not going there. I refuse.

*Which would you choose between necrophilia, bestiality and coprophilia?

Is coprophilia copping a feel?

*Coprophilia is playing with excrement in a sexual context. 

Like GG Allin?

*That's it.

The anal sex thing's not really my cup of tea, to be honest. I think there's something quite amiss about that, actually. I think that shows an odd side of people, that they either want to be domineering or they're batting for the wrong team. If I had to pick one... God Almighty...

*If it helps, the woman can have just died in the last few minutes. You don't have to dig her up.

They don't have to be maggot-riddled corpses, then?

*Not unless you want them to be.

I think I'd need another option. There would need to be a fourth choice, like abstinence or something.

*Spontaneous combustion?

Yes. Or killing yourself as you're about to penetrate.

*What's your darkest secret?

That I'm a necromancer, coprophilia freak and screaming bender

that pretends to be a heterosexual, normal person.

I knew it! Nothing else?

My darkest secret? That I've been getting away with this for 27 years.

Def Leppard's covers album, Yeah!, is out now