Thom Yorke on BBC Radio 1

Ed O'Brien drops in on Radio 1 just back from America, where two and a half weeks of everything fried, sweet and enormous have put him off the food. He knows it sounds shallow when he should be talking about Barack Obama. He would rather be in Europe in the summer, where the fans in Spain, Italy and Portugal, and the Celts, let themselves go, and their cultures share the band's leaning towards melancholy and celebrate it.

He always wanted “Bodysnatchers” as a single, and it was the first in America. “House of Cards” was the first song in rehearsal when they got back together, and it was where he heard Thom Yorke shifting as a lyricist. The first year and a half of In Rainbows was poor, because they tried to do it themselves and finished nothing. A good day came at the start of the second week back with Nigel Godrich, at a big old house in Wiltshire with the band sleeping in caravans. After supper they did two takes of “Bodysnatchers”, and the record has essentially the second.

“Oh dear I'm going to say something I'm going to regret,” he says, before owning up to wanting an acoustic record one day, and a disco record, which Yorke has a bee in his bonnet about. For now things are good: in the last two weeks in America the band looked at one another and agreed they are the luckiest people out there doing this. Then he is asked to cast the band as Sex and the City: Yorke is Samantha, Jonny Greenwood Miranda, Colin Greenwood Charlotte and Phil Selway Carrie.