In her latest exhibit entitled It's A Madhouse! Monteavaro tells the story of a super-hero, complete with sidekick, battling against the forces of evil personified by a mad woman dressed in black... Monteavaro explains, "Adam Ant goes to a planet and meets Gary Numan. Gary is sad because he is down to his last eyeliner pencil. Adam and Gary go on a quest to find the rest of the eyeliner on the planet..."

Numan is at his most animated and unreserved when he's telling stories of his flying experiences. He tells me of an expedition in a World War Two aircraft which almost ended in disaster in the Pacific, and another adventure in which a plane's engine began to break apart over the Arctic.

One of the founding fathers of synth pop, Gary Numan's influence extends far beyond his lone American hit, "Cars," which still stands as one of the defining new wave singles.

Gary Numan was a driven, creative, troubled 21-year-old loner who still lived with his parents... In interviews he came across as aloof, pretentious and mildly obnoxious, attributes which would latterly be assignd to a mild form of Asperger Syndrome.

His basic sound -- subsequently very influential in the dance music and new romantic spheres -- began with precise, antiseptic synth handling much of the instrumental work, topped off with lobotomized deadpan vocals singing science-fiction lyrics.

How old? Gary Numan - once the living embodiment of electronic music, and he of `Are Friends Electric?' fame - seems to have been around forever, looming inauspiciously in the background like one of those paintings on Scooby Doo; you only notice he's there when the eyes move.

Linking to lyrics of 258 songs.

The Networld Of Gary Numan - tons of information, pictures, sounds from the "Godfather Of Electro".

I wanted an electric guitar. I was fascinated by the dials, it flashed in the light and was all shiny with a wire coming out of it.

"I don't say things in the way that other people would," he explains. "I might say things in an abrupt way and therefore seem cold and uncaring. This interview is fine, because our relationship is clearly defined and I know exactly what's expected of me. But if you met me at a party, I probably wouldn't know what to say and you'd think 'what a miserable sod'."

"I realized there was a reason for the way I see the world, which was a relief," Numan says. "I'm more comfortable around machines than people. When I was younger, there were a lot of misunderstandings because I didn't know how to deal with people. I'd do something that was perfectly understandable to me, but people found it offensive. Finding out I had a condition let me focus on what I was doing that annoyed people and helped me change the way I relate, even if I had to learn the new behavior in a mechanical manner." After a period of soul searching, Numan reinvented himself. "I went back into the studio and didn't think about my career, or radio, or anything," he says. "I tried to approach (my music) the way I did when I was a teenager. I made music for the sheer joy of it, not stopping to care if anybody else liked it."

I don't write music to communicate, I write it as therapy. I write for me. If people are able to identify with it in some way then I'm happy but that is not the reason I do it... Any communication is unintentional. I'm screaming in my own small room to no-one but me. It's just that sometimes people walking by can hear me.