1. Listening to Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody inspired him to become a musician

Queen may not be an obvious influence on Radiohead but listening to them as a child kick-started his passion for music. “I started playing when I was seven, eight,” he says. “And I was obsessed with Queen when Bohemian Rhapsody came out. I lay down in front of these big speakers in my friend’s house and we just listened to Bohemian Rhapsody and at that point I decided, ‘Yep this is what I’m doing’.”

2. As a child he built his own guitar. It wasn’t amazing

Soon after his Bohemian Rhapsody epiphany, young Yorke decided to build himself a guitar. “It sort of worked,” he says. “It was literally rough cut out with a saw, you know – it was terrible. And then shortly after that my dad felt sorry for me and eventually bought me one.”

3. He was born with his left eye permanently shut, and had multiple surgeries on it as a child, but he likes the fact it is different

“When I was born, the left eye was shut: there was no muscle that would open it” he explains. “This was in the seventies when they’d take a bit of muscle from elsewhere – in my case my arse – and they graft it on to make it work.” He had a number of operations but the last one went wrong and he decided against having any more. “At that point I decided I liked the fact that it wasn’t the same, and I’ve liked it ever since. And when people say stuff I kind of thought it was a badge of pride, and still do.”

4. Radiohead are named after a song by Talking Heads, so there's no surprise that he chooses one of their songs

Yorke tells the story of the first time he heard Talking Heads’ 1980 album Remain in Light, at the same friend’s house where he had listened to Bohemian Rhapsody. “It was like a bomb going off in my head; I’d literally never heard anything like it,” he says. “Talking Heads did something with a studio that had never been done before. And even at a young age I could see that.” Despite pleas to be allowed to take the full LP to his desert island, he settles for its opening track, Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On). “I’ll just have to imagine the rest of the record, won’t I?” he says.

5. He credits two of his teachers with setting him on the career path he is still on today

He didn’t feel like he fitted in at the all-boys private school he attended. “The music school and the art school was my sanctuary,” he says. But it was nonetheless where he met the rest of the boys who would go on to form Radiohead, and he credits two of his teachers for giving him the opportunities in that set them on that path. “I guess I was really lucky. Two of these teachers – the head of the art department and the head of the music department – saw something in me and were incredibly supportive,” he recalls. “You don’t realise until afterwards how important that is. I am absolutely convinced that if both those kind men, if they had not done that, I wouldn’t be here today doing this.”