'Cocker's lyrics were what made me want to write stories'I first heard Jarvis Cocker's voice when he read Ian McEwan's "Last Day of Summer" on Radio 1, some time in 1993. The reading sparked an early interest in McEwan's work, but it also led me to the music of Pulp, a love of which I've retained ever since. More than any writer I'd come across at that point, Cocker's lyrics were what made me want to tell stories (and, for a brief period, wear corduroy smoking-jackets). His songs were tales of a world I recognised; a world of cheap cigarettes, threadbare sofas, "crumbling concrete bus shelters", and boys who didn't always get the girl.From the outset, I thought of Pulp's ...