The chair he's leaning against (top double-page spread) was part of the set in Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey' and the sculpture in the background is an original Dali. The windows behind him are fantastic in that by a flick of a switch they go from clear to white opaque (see same windows behind stairs on first and second spread). Oddly enough I'd been reading about them (not his in particular) in a book of modern inventions. They are full of liquid crystal and featured in the Science Museum in South Kensington. Stewart had apparently been in trouble with his neighbours after he used their surface to watch a projected porn film, inadvertently giving the outside world a ring-side seat, back-projection style.

His carpets also throbbed at the flick of a switch, via the fibre optic wires he'd had woven into them. It all went from being high-tech to Blue Peter thereafter, in that what actually powered this was a projector in a cupboard with a spinning wheel, turned by the heat of the lens (bit like those naff coal effect fires), aimed at the other ends of all the fibre optic wires (no wonder so many rock musicians die in fires). On top of this the walls had various configurations of tiny Sharp liquid crystal television monitors, which could not only simultaneously show a movie or whatever from laser discs or DVDs, but they could be set so that the action actually moved to a separate piece of music or electonic instrument, keyboard/guitar etc., so the film movement was synchronised to the beat. All very exciting and impressive, but I couldn't help thinking it smacked of Austin Powers on acid.

Stewart claimed that the whole thing 'wasn't just a rich man's folly either' as he struggled with the newly rich and tasteless rock musician cliché, but 'a totally functional, highly sophisticated media lab' where he can work undisturbed. He roped in interior designer Simon Withers, the furniture specialist Tommy Roberts and pioneering electronics company Xylo, who were briefed to design a creative ambience that was part video amusement arcade, part funfair. "What we’ve ended up with is more Sunderland disco" Dave said proudly!

There were scrap-books of photographs laying around, some of pre-fame days and his band The Tourists, with his former lover, the young Annie Lennox. There were also some showing his new found passion of photography, personal portraits of everyone he rubs shoulders with from Mick Jagger to Bob Dylan and Lou Reed. More telling and voyeuristic than looking in people's bathroom cabinets!