Damon Albarn - Mike Skinner Urges Damon Albarn To Quit

Mike Skinner Urges Damon Albarn To Quit

Mike Skinner thinks Damon Albarn should stop making records.

The musician ended his The Streets project last year and has urged the 43-year-old Blur singer - who is also in Gorillaz and The Good The Bad and the Queen, as well as helming his Dr. Dee opera - to do the same, as he doesn't have the grace of his former Britpop rival Noel Gallagher.

When asked if he has any regrets about finishing The Streets, Mike said: ''Noel Gallagher has always just stood there and sung a song, and I think you can Take That right through to middle age. He's so graceful, isn't he?

''Whereas Damon Albarn, say, needs to stop, 'cos his kind of music is... 'I'm a bit mad!' Eurgh, it just doesn't work. And unfortunately my music is, 'I'm a bit mad.' So no. No regrets at all.''

Mike started winding down his musical career after he was diagnosed with ME - a condition of which the main symptom is severe fatigue and malaise following mental or physical activity - which he says made him initially retract away not just from the music industry, but also from modern life for 18 months.

He added to The Guardian newspaper: ''It was a weird one. I don't know what I had and no one really knows. And I think it's still there a little bit In Me. But is it ME? I've got no idea. But I had to stop working 'cos that was definitely making me worse. So I switched everything off, I switched off the email and put the phone in the bin, and I just - well, I watched 'James Bond' and 'The Sopranos'.''

Mike Skinner's memoir of his music career, 'The Story of the Streets', is published on 29 March.