"My girlfriend Sarah says you get the animal you deserve and that Fusker (the word for a form of internet theft) is stand-offish and grumpy, just like me. He's quite wild - semi-feral really - and he bites.
"But he was a present from Hammond's wife, Mindy, so I couldn't say, 'No thank you,' could I?"
May has dated music journalist Sarah Frater for seven years. "I like a bit of rusticity in my women," he says. It is a brave man or a fool who describes his girlfriend as "rustic" but he adds blithely: "Sarah's an eccentric. She won't mind."