Phil Selway on BBC Radio 4

BBC Radio 4's The Thought Chamber shuts Philip Selway in an anechoic room in central London, cut off from all outside sound, where a voice has no echo, and turns out the lights. Asked beforehand whether he hopes to create something in there, he says that depends on the royalty split, though a minor epiphany would be fun. His first verdict on total darkness is that it is quite nice. He had worried his head would fill with profane and obscene thoughts not fit for Radio 4; “fortunately, unfortunately, that hasn't happened yet.” The dark reminds him of what he has read about Quaker meetings, and of waking at three in the morning when every light in his head comes on and a dimmer switch is hard to find. That is good time for lyrics, he says, and they come out more strung out than anything written at eleven in the morning after a cup of coffee.

The stillness takes him back to his years as a listening volunteer with the Samaritans, the quiet between calls, and to the Meiji Shrine in Tokyo. As for encounters with the divine, he reckons he is a beginner belt. His trip through Oxford on the way in has stirred his teens there in the early 80s, an Oxford from the first episodes of Inspector Morse, all walks in the University Parks and gone rose-tinted. No music plays in his head in the chamber, though before a show he generally picks a different Desert Island Discs from the archive to listen to. When the lights come back on he asks whether he has to pay.