On stage you can't take your eyes off Lisa Marie Presley. She has a huge presence that draws you in, way beyond questioning which of her features most look like her father's - in fact it's her eyes, her jaw line, her sultry gaze, all of her.
Performing songs from her album Storm & Grace she delivers raw emotion and is comfortable not only in her own skin but peeling off layers so you see inside her soul. The lyrics, which she wrote, are all about loss, grief, love, self-destruction.
On stage she's coquettish, flirts with the audience, has a commanding charisma. Shockingly when I meet her she is huddled into the corner of a sofa scarcely able to raise her large all-feeling eyes to look at me.
Her chestnut hair falls over her face. She is wearing a grey floral prairie dress, nipped in grey jacket and flat lace-up boots. She seems tiny.
When I tell her how much I loved her record she looks somewhat shocked and shyly mumbles, 'I appreciate that.' For a while she doesn't say anything at all. Then I tell her I think she's the only person that I've met where I've also met three of her husbands and her mother.
'Three?' she says startled. 'Which ones?' The husbands have been Danny Keough, Michael Jackson and Nicolas Cage. I met Michael Jackson only briefly with his rabbi Shmuley Boteach as we were acquaintances. Danny, the father of her children Danielle and Benjamin spent an evening at my house in LA being riotously amusing.
And spookily I interviewed Nic Cage when he did a movie which ended up in him being a flying Elvis and he told me of his obsession with the star and his longing for Lisa Marie who at that point he'd never met. They had an intense roller coaster romance and tiny marriage (108 days) in 2002. 'That's interesting,' she says, trying very hard to put the entire circus behind her,
Her current husband is Californian born musician Michael Lockwood. On her album notes she says for all the world to see: 'I've never known or experienced a more supportive, loving, selfless, devoted human being in all of my life… Your love and support are the very foundation of my sanity and stability.' Lockwood knew successful British musician, Richard Hawley, a former member of Pulp, and thought there would be good songwriting chemistry.
'I was just trying to get a lot of obscure people to see what happened as experiments. I ended up having a great rapport with him and also Ed (Harcourt) and Sasha (Skarbek). We wrote the songs together. I wrote all the lyrics. I laboured over finding the exact right way to phrase. I sold everything and moved here. I wrote 30 songs in eight months and the album was recorded in 16 days.
The idea of a new start is partly why she moved to a farm in East Sussex and apparently goes to her local pub to play darts and has grown fond of sheep. She raises her eyebrow as if to say that's largely exaggerated. 'I am embracing village life. I love it.
'I wanted to embrace life here. I love village life. I love what is simple. People are good, they know right from wrong, they know good from bad. I was around the wrong people for a long time, people who have no conscience, people who are doing the most draconian things and I had no idea about any of it. I was an emotional wreck therefore I needed simplicity. I needed people who knew right from wrong, simply people. I needed loyalty and loyalty is a big thing in the village, they are protective and sweet.'
It sounds like she could be Elvis when she says this, who got caught up in the excess of his own life and never lost a love of country living and Tennessee. Is it like that? 'Yes, it's true. I certainly didn't have all of that in Los Angeles.'
The feel of the record is very roots orientated, shades of the kind of music that her father would have loved. Quietly she says, 'Yes, I hope so. I think he would like this record. I think he would also understand how I have had to navigate to get here.
'This was from a very raw and natural place. In the past I was surrounded by the wrong elements. I surrounded myself with that and it created a lot of anger. I didn't know where it was coming from until I got rid of it. I was shadow boxing a lot.
'I wrote it (Soften The Blows) one day feeling vulnerable about life and finding a way to put down how I was feeling. After moving here I felt I could appreciate Los Angeles more.'
Once she had garnered distance and perspective from the place which had provided so much pain she was able to look at it afresh. The children don't have to go to school in Los Angeles. The older ones, Danielle, 23, and Benjamin, 20, are beyond school age. 'My three-year-olds (sisters Harper and Finley)are getting home schooled.'
Home schooling is something of which she is an avid supporter. They do however make the trip back to Los Angeles 'for the grandparents.'
I had read that her son Benjamin had a record deal. 'No, that's a made up story, an opportunist decided to start spreading a rumour about him. It hit like wildfire but it's not true. He's a musician but he's just finding his way. He keeps things close to the bone.' Is that a family tradition? 'Probably, yes.'
Her father is certainly known to have felt more than he said. Her mother on the other hand was very forthright when I interviewed her some years back. I remember her telling me she was so terrified of gaining weight when she was pregnant she ate only boiled eggs. Lisa Marie finishes the sentence, 'and apples. She gained seven pounds. My mum had some strange ideas. At one point she didn't want to fix her dog because she didn't want it to get fat. She's not like that any more. This was years ago.
'At the time she was 20, 21 years old and my father had beauties and actresses surrounding him at all times and there was so much pressure on her to stay absolutely flawless. I will never be flawless.'
I see instantly that she is very different from her mother Priscilla, not only in looks but in personality types. 'I have never had the idea that I have to look a certain way, that I have to look young.'
It must have been a lot of pressure for her growing up with a mother who wanted to be flawless and a father who was one of the most famous men in the world. She shrugs, 'I don't know. I wasn't really close to my mum growing up. I didn't get close to her till my mid-thirties. Her ideas weren't mine, we were like oil and water.
'Now we're the best of friends. But it took us a long time to find a way to each other. We just didn't have a relationship. I lived with her till I turned 17 and on the eve of my 17th birthday I moved out. It was mostly due to the men she chose to be with. I wasn't a fan of them, and that always got in the way of our relationship.'
Girls and mothers can be rivals, can conflict. 'Yes, it's true. But now she and I have found our way. She is the first person I call if anything happens and the same likewise. Thank God we have that.'
Did she always feel closer to her daddy and desperately lonely that the one person who understood her was not there (he died when she was nine). 'Yes, he was the one I was closest to, for sure.'
Did she feel she grew up too quickly, having to deal with being an only child with one parent and a lot of loss? 'Probably. What I was exposed to early in life was a lot. I feel I've lived many lifetimes in my lifetime. I just saw a lot right out of the gate.'
Is that why she got married so early, because she felt she'd lived many lives and was mature? 'I felt like I needed to. I was pregnant at 20. I wanted to have children early on. I wanted to ground myself and care for them. I was always maternal so looking after them was my priority right away.'
I wonder if she still has that nurturing instinct, that saving syndrome. It's been written that that was her compulsion for Michael Jackson. She wanted to save him. She looks at me suspiciously. 'What do you mean?' You see a wounded man, a wounded soul, and you want to step in and save it. '
'Yes, of course, to some degree, but not to the point of risking my own life and sanity.' Those patterns are hard to break. 'Yes,' she agrees solemnly.
It didn't start off like that with her first husband with whom she now shares 'a great relationship.'
'Danny was the one that was getting me on the rails. I was the one who was wild. He was together. Then we flipped. I got it together and he went off the rails.'
The core of her life is her kids. 'My kids and my music and loyal friends and not obscuring myself with silly stuff. You have to be more complicated in order to pursue the simple. I feel I've been through it. All my life I was surrounded. I had assistants for this and that. An entourage. And entourages are the worst. We got rid of everybody, literally, and started from ground zero.
'I looked at what so many people surround themselves with and there's just so much toxicity that goes on. Everyone is out for something.'
What was the moment that pivotal in this decision? 'I had surrounded myself with the wrong people. They obscured my view and when they went out of the way I could see what was going on. They have gone now. I think somehow unscathed. The lack of conscience bothers me but at least it's over.
'If I did something horrible to somebody, one of my friends particularly, it would destroy me. There was betrayal going around me for years. Getting out started a process. It's good now that it's gone.'
She says her new songs felt like a new beginning. Although sometimes tortured they were very therapeutic. 'I process things when I'm writing.'
Does she find it comforting that so many people can empathise with the specific pain of love, loss and self-destruction. For a lot of her life she seemed to have lived it in a bubble.
'There has been a huge misconception of me because I helped create it. I've done records before but this is an intimate index of who I am. I just want to keep working. That's what makes me the most happy.'
Does she worry about what people think of it? 'Of course I care, but I can't obsess about it. I don't think you can ever exorcise insecurities and fears, you just have to address them when they come.'
And if they were gone completely? 'There would be no songs.'

The hotel that Sir Roger Moore likes to stay in when he is in London smells of oak and cigar. It is old fashioned and old school. It could be a set from an Eighties Bond movie.
Sir Roger appears in his classic navy blazer with gold buttons, exactly the same blazer he's worn for decades and wore as Bond. He jokes, 'It's the one I share with Paul McKenna. He has it two days a week.'
It is almost lunchtime and he orders a glass of his favourite Sancerre, chilled and definitely not shaken, and together we peruse his new book Bond On Bond. An amusing and informative compilation of not just his Bond years but all the Bonds. It is written with his customary wit as dry as the martinis Bond drank. His Bond never took himself seriously and was the funniest. 'That's because I'm an idiot,' he says with a slow endearing smile.
Sir Roger has had a lifelong habit of putting himself down. I suggest as a defence mechanism to attack himself before others got there.
'Probably, yes. I remember my agent saying years ago: "You have to stop saying these things about yourself because people will believe it." And I said: "Well it's bloody true".'
Did he fear that people would say he was… He finishes my sentence: 'A boring old fart. Don't be frightened of those words,' he giggles.
He notices a dog on my notebook and says how much he is enjoying Paul O'Grady's For The Love Of Dogs. 'I enjoy it much more than his interviews. I love animals but we live in an apartment in Monaco. It would be too confined. And the other thing is they have a firework display once a week. It's an enormous display. I don't like fireworks. I've tried to talk to the palace to stop it. Princess Charlene agrees with me. It's the most appalling waste of money. The amount of children that could be saved with money that literally goes up in smoke is ridiculous.'
When he mentions Princess Charlene it's not a conscious name-dropping, it's more that his charity work for children is constantly on his mind. Sir Roger has always mixed with the set they used to call jet even before he was a fully-fledged member. David Niven and Gregory Peck were constantly his dinner guests and he was friends with Frank Sinatra. He doesn't like to dwell on the fact that a lot of his friends have died.
He makes new friends easily because he's such a delight to be with. For instance he is friendly with Paul McKenna - 'He has my jacket on Thursdays and Fridays. I went to see him and he helped me stop eating bread. He asked me what taste did I hate the most in the world. Coriander makes me vomit so now I have to pinch myself and think of coriander.'
He is looking very smart in a striped shirt and tie. His eyes are sometimes quite penetrating and then stare off into the distance. He speaks very slowly and quietly. He's still tall and looks strong. It's hard to imagine that the man who played Bond the most times is now 85.
He last played Bond when he was 57 and looked incredible with his melting eyes, sweep of hair and a six-pack stomach that he denies he ever had.
Being such a beautiful man could be a disadvantage as an actor. 'People are always suspicious, like a pretty girl.' Bond girls were notoriously gorgeous and it was often said were hired for their looks, but they could all act.
'Oh, oh, one or two, but I wouldn't go that far.'
The chapter on Bond girls in his book discusses how in so many ways being a Bond girl was an accolade - the ultimate seal of approval, confirmation that a woman could bewitch and beguile. Impresario and producer Cubby Broccoli, founder of the Bond franchise, was always 'a breast man' so often they were very well endowed.
'Even if they had no lines they were just there. They were always Bond girls. Most of the leading ladies came in and said: "I'm going to be different. I'm going to be assertive and real and equal." And they wanted to dissociate themselves from the label Bond Girl, which is you look vulnerable and available.'
He raises his famous eyebrow at the combination of feminism and Bond girl knowing that is an improbable concept. 'One Bond lady we worked with overheard one of the producers commenting "She's got a nice arse." She was outraged and said: "How dare you treat her as a sex object" and he was bewildered. "I'm just saying she's got a nice arse."' He pauses. 'Of course I'm not going to tell you which Bond Girl.'
His own Bond Girls who he likes to call Bond Ladies - have included Britt Ekland, Maud Adams, Barbara Bach, Jane Seymour, Grace Jones, Mary Stavin and Fiona Fullerton. There were usually three per movie. 'The one who goes to bed with Bond in the first two reels is going to die. The second Bond Girl is usually the villain and is going to die. The third you are not quite sure what is going to happen to her. If she marries him she dies, otherwise she remains helping Bond keep the British end up. Poor old Bond, he's not doing it on Viagra. He doesn't have to. A new partner always helps.
'Let me tell you the story about an old man who goes to the doctor and gets an injection. The doctor says: "It will only work for a couple of hours so go home and do it while it lasts." The next day he calls to see how it went and the man said: "Alright." And the doctor asks: "And how was it for your wife?" "She was out." The doctor said: "Did you have anybody else in the house?" "Yes, the maid and with her I don't need it."'
On Piers Morgan's Life Stories Madeline Smith, who played the sensuous Italian agent who seduced James Bond in Live And Let Die, whose dress he unzipped with his magnetic watch, joked, 'When you had a bed scene with Bond, Sir Roger's then wife Luisa (Mattioli) would be at the bottom of the bed looking on." He concedes that bed scenes usually attracted many more people than would usually be on set but Luisa was not included.
'She would say: "I know it's your job. Just don't enjoy it." My darling wife Kristina says that now she wants to see the Bond films. She's never seen them. In fact she only recently found out I was an actor. I use the word loosely of course.' Sending himself up seems to be an unbreakable habit.
'We first met at a mutual friend's house in St. Paul-de-Vence. She was a neighbour and she was invited to Sunday lunch by other friends Jack and Dorothy Davies. Jack's Aunt Olga was the original girl to be fired out of a cannon. No cannons but a great lunch. Dorothy said to Kristina, "Soon you'll be seeing Sammy Davis." Kristina was quite excited to be seeing the wonderfully talented Sammy Davis. And then a black cat came in through the door and Dorothy said: "This is Sammy." Kristina was rather disappointed but Dorothy said: "Very soon Roger Moore will be coming." So she was expecting another cat and I came in. I was purring. Funnily enough I was once in a play called The Lady Purrs where I played a cat who had been spayed.'
It is hard to imagine Sir Roger spayed. He is so effortlessly the lady charmer and perfect for the role of lady loving Bond. For so many people he is the quintessential perfect Bond. He brings charm as opposed to brawn and the distinct impression that he took none of it seriously.
He came to Bond after years as TV hero Simon Templar in The Saint and Lord Brett Sinclair with Tony Curtis in The Persuaders. Was he insecure about taking on the role of Bond after Sean Connery? 'No, I had no insecurities. I played heroes on television and in films I'd been acting since 1944 and I was an experienced technician. I wasn't fazed. The only time I had any trepidation was when I was at home waiting for the car to take me to London for a press screening and I thought supposing people don't like it. And then I thought it's like having a baby. The waters are broken, you're in pain, the baby is going to come, good, bad indifferent.'
Did he work hard on his diet and exercise regimes? He gives a dry laugh. 'There was no diet or fitness regime established by the actors that have played Bond, or at least not that I know of. It was suggested that it wouldn't hurt if I lost a little weight and they thought my hair was a bit poofy woofy from playing Lord Sinclair on The Persuaders. I think I was a little overweight because I'd been drinking too much champagne. I should have been slim and fairly hard but I could never have been like Daniel Craig who has muscles on muscles on muscles. Once you have led a louche life you are never in good condition. I've never had a washboard stomach, I just used to hold it in scene by scene.
'Once we started shooting I would live my normal life, just try not to eat sweet creamy things. Every morning I would always do 45 minutes of exercise against my own body weight, side bends, twists, sit-ups. About three years ago my back started to give me problems so I stopping doing sit-ups, and now my knees have packed in and I got fed up picking myself off the floor. I love skiing but snowboarders would bump into me so I've now retired from skiing.'
He says this without a trace of nostalgia or secret longing. 'It's funny you know. You give things up and when you think about when you're going to do it it's a sheer horror but then you don't thinking about it. I gave up smoking cigarettes in 1971 and I didn't think about it. I didn't have to worry about it any more. Twelve years ago I also gave up cigars. I don't miss it. The willpower lasts for about half a day and by then you just know you're not going to do it any more, you think of kissing someone who smokes is like licking an ashtray and that puts you off.'
You get the impression that Sir Roger was always naughty but never a bad boy, although he does seem to have had a liking for women with violent tempers. His first wife, ice skater Doorn Van Steyn had a volatile temper. She once threw all his clothes in a bath of hot water so he had no dry clothes in which to leave. His second wife, singer Dorothy Squires, who was 13 years his senior, smashed his guitar over his head.
It seems that there's something about his quiet dry manner that made his first two wives furious. 'That was blown up out of all proportion, except my guitar was ruined. But quite rightly so. I was a pain in the arse. I deserved it. I don't argue. I refuse to argue because I think the minute you raise your voice you are losing the argument. If you speak irrationally it's better to say nothing at all and that really pisses wives off. I just don't pick up the bit. I'm a Libran, very well balanced, good looking and modest.'
The relationship with Squires ended badly with her announcing that her heart was bleeding, but in later years when she became ill with cancer Sir Roger paid for all her treatment. He went on to marry Luisa Mattioli with whom he had his three children, Geoffrey, Deborah and Christian.
I wondered if when he received his knighthood at Buckingham Palace in 2003 the Queen was surrounded by corgis as in the Olympics opening ceremony where she starred with Daniel Craig as James Bond.
'I don't know. It was probably one of the most important days of my life that I should remember forever but I don't remember the moment. I shut my eyes before the sword because I'm a coward. When she lifted it I thought oh God. I did look her in the eye and the Queen has the most beautiful beautiful eyes and really good legs. I discovered that when we were both doing something for British Airways. They were celebrating the amount of money they had made for Change For Good. I had to walk up the steps of a 747 behind her and I had to say to her, "Beautiful Scotch eggs." I like legs. I like what's on top too and I think it's ridiculous to be upset if anyone compliments you on features that are nothing to do with you, they are given to you by your genetic make-up.'
Sir Roger and Bond are old fashioned like that. In his book Sir Roger delights in telling us that Pussy Galore used to like girls more than boys and James Bond had to convert her. I wondered why that particular male fantasy had not made its way into more Bond films. He says: 'Ah, to pervert a lesbian so she doesn't have to imagine what it feels like any more,' he says with a little grin. His Bond got to do more sex scenes than subsequent ones. When poor old Timothy Dalton came in there were huge anti-promiscuity campaigns. People were terrified of AIDS so Bonds were less racy.
'I think that Timothy felt he should not be racy. There should not be promiscuity without affection. But you can hardly see James Bond saying, "Just a minute Pussy." Bond has so many commercial tie-ins. Now it's beer and Bollinger, but you can't imagine Durex being involved. "Wear a rubber like Bond." "Elastic is forever."
Throughout his years as Bond he couldn't pass a bar without being served a dry martini whether he wanted it or not. 'I used to say please can I have a sarsaparilla. My favourite drink really is a Sancerre,' he says toasting his glass. 'If I have an aperitif it will be a martini but made with Tanqueray gin.'
The hotel we're in has been his home away from home for the last 18 years. 'We launched Checkout For Children here where every guest has a £1 added to a bill for one night and that now happens at Sheraton hotels in many places of the world. It's a wonderful thing.'
His charity work has raised a staggering £80 million for children all over the world. Next up he plans a Hans Christian Anderson project for UNICEF. 'We are going to have a number of celebrities read Hans Christian Anderson to be downloaded. I'm always giving my boring talks on why and where the money goes.
Does he have any acting projects coming up? 'My son Geoffrey is involved in film finance and is hoping The Saint will be revived. I will not play the Saint but I will be in it. I might be the father of the Saint or the grandmother! You won't know whether he's a hero or a villain. I'm an ambiguous bugger.
He said he loved writing this book and exploring his old friends, particularly Lois Maxwell who played Moneypenny. 'She and I were at RADA together in the same class. I knew her all those years and sadly she's not with us any more. And Desmond Llewellyn (Q) was killed in a car smash. Such a lovely, sweet man.'
Sir Roger seems a little choked, literally coughing on his Sancerre. In the absence of water he downs the rest of the glass, smiles and toasts once more.

* Bond On Bond by Roger Moore, published by Michael O'Mara Books, is out now.

Alicia Keys is curled up on a sofa in the corner of the photographic studio. Jet lagged but not particularly bleary she is picking at some mango, pineapple and cucumber and tea with almond milk and agave. She's never drunk coffee. She doesn't like the taste or need the stimulation.
Alicia is always switched on.
She is wearing Louboutin ankle boots with the red soles well worn, Givenchy black jeans with faux cobalt blue rips. Her jacket is also Givenchy. Her face is fresh but for Cleopatra eyeliner that makes her look like a silver screen movie star.
Her hair recently shorn is slicked back close to her head. Her nails are a blood red oval with the half moons painted creamy, very 1940s.
It is an open and brave face. She is listening to one of her new tracks, Brand New Me, hands me her headset asking if I mind her 'ear juice'. The track is at that time unfinished but she wanted specifically to play it because it best sums up how her life has changed, how she has had a personal revolution since finding love with Swizz Beatz (rapper and producer Kasseem Dean) and becoming a mother to son Egypt.
It's been a slow but stealthy revolution that's taken place within her that has seen Alicia transform from a feisty street kid from Hell's Kitchen with her hair in braids, a girl who carried a knife and a defensive face, who expressed everything through her music yet was wary and defensive and not comfortable in her own skin.
Countless mega-selling albums - Songs In A Minor (released when she was only 20 was the biggest selling debut record of all time at more than 12 million), Tne Diary of Alicia Keys, As I Am and The Element Of Freedom - made her a worldwide superstar, yet she remained strangely ambiguous, never releasing any personal details about herself.
The public only knew her from her songs. No one knew who she was in love with or if she'd ever really been love. She once told me, 'I'm not the person who runs around sharing things with everybody.'
The brand new Alicia is not only more confident she is more warm, open and trusting. She has allowed herself to be vulnerable for the first time.
She grew up an only child with her hard working Italian Irish mother Terry Augello who was an actress and legal secretary. Her father, Craig Cook, a former flight attendant turned masseur, left her mother when she was two and she spent many years having no relationship with him at all. But upon the death of her paternal grandmother in 2006, with whom she was very close, she gradually came to reconsider their relationship and only recently decided to give it a fresh start putting past pain, abandonment issues and fighting her mother's corner behind her.
With each album there has been an emotional shift, Alicia becoming less and less afraid to express who she is. The album Girl On Fire is fierce.
'Brand New Me didn't happen straight away, it was an evolution. It was a whole journey to get there. Some of the songs on Girl On Fire are very vulnerable. Some are me talking to myself in a subconscious way. Some have a sense of abandonment, of letting go.
'It's been a long process sorting out my work life balance since having Egypt. The first process was just bringing him home and for three months just being with him. "Do I start to record now? How do I do that?" What I learnt from Egypt was I should not always be endlessly in the studio. I realised that was counterproductive.
'I thought I got more done by staying there longer but in actuality I can get more done in less time by being more sustained and focused. I never even had a social life before when I was making a record. I would think nothing else should come anywhere near it and I was so boring. I'm much more fun now.
'Even coming to London on this trip is a new level of learning about work life balance. What time zone should I keep him on? Egypt continues to change my life every day. (He is named after the country which she visited a few years ago).

'I went on my own, completely alone. When I ran away to Egypt it was the first vacation I had ever taken in my adult life. It came at a time where I realised I could not hold everything together. I had been dealing with a lot. (Her grandmother's illness and death and the onslaught of fame).
'The wanting to control thing can be very detrimental. On the outside I'm calm and collected so nobody knows what I am going through. I realised if I wanted to grow as an artist and as a woman I had to let that ship go.
'I went to the Valley of the Kings down to the temples and the tombs. I sailed down the Nile and I swam in the Red Sea. I saw the power of human beings and the inspiration of things that have lasted for thousands of years. I feel I have roots in Egypt, although I'm not sure of the exact origins.
'Who knew one trip to Egypt would change my life. I would like to think I could still go on my own. Everyone needs alone time.'

'I do love being on my own. And there are times when I'm not alone but I'm in my own space. Like in the gym. I've just started to do boxing. And even though there's another person physically there with me I feel I'm in my own space.'

'I'm loving boxing. I don't care what music is that I work out to I just need a rhythm. Afro-Cuban is good, Spanish is good too. I learnt that it takes 18 months before you really shed the baby weight. It just doesn't come off in the first 18 months.
'I gained 30lbs, which isn't that much, and once the baby comes out a lot of weight comes with that, but the rest, about 10lbs, seems to stay. You are constantly trying to figure out what to do. Eventually I resigned myself to this will take as long as it takes and at around 18 months I felt I'm ready, I'm really ready. And then the last 10lbs went.'

'Egypt is awesome. He's two and just so silly. He's super light and super giggly. We feel so right together, we definitely fit. From the first moment I saw him I loved him. It's a mixture of relief, he's finally here, he's safe, and who he is, a whole full person.
'A lot of people when they get babies they take them home and think, who are you? What are you doing here? Then eventually they fall for them. Not me. It was love at first sight and it got progressively obsessional. I want to be there every second. I would like to have some more. At least one. Every woman thinks she wants a girl and so did I but I'm so glad he's a boy. The mother son bond is really powerful.'

'Women are more complex by nature. They are born complex. Daughters are often closer to their fathers. I grew up with only my mother. Recently I feel both me and my father have grown up. I think something happens when you become a grandparent. You have a different mind state. There's less pressure on the relationship, so maybe it's closer. He was with Egypt last week and he loved it.
'My father and I are fine now. I would say in the process of growing up you realise you've been holding on to anger. I was angry then and am sure I had the right to be angry, but if you hold on to all this anger the only person you're hurting is you.
'The process started from my (paternal) grandmother being ill. It caused a shift. You realise what's important when you see a person you love dearly and you're not going to have them for long. It was important to her. I saw his love for her. I realised he wasn't an evil person so I said can we start from this point on? Can we be friends? I can start to understand you and you can start to understand me.
'It's a great period in my life. All the relationships in my life I feel I've got to a place where I'm honest and I can cut the shit. Here is what it was, here is what it is, and here's what it might be. Let's just be in the moment.'

'Definitely since Egypt I'm a more peaceful person. I'm a more comfortable in my own skin person. But it happened before that too. I was becoming more open. I started to understand things better. I stopped being angry with my father and defensive.
'There's some things you can't change and some things you're going to have to change. I think I put myself in I've learnt so much recently. I think I had boxed myself in because of other people's opinions, other people's fears and worries and thoughts so I stopped worrying what other people's worries might be.'

'I cut my hair and I love it. It really is the embodiment of everything I've been doing over these past couple of years. Letting go, freedom, empowerment, doing my own thing. I might never go back to long hair. The washing process, everything, is done in a few seconds and very spontaneous. It can go curly or straight.'

'I feel connected to both my parents' roots. My mother is Irish Italian. Her Italian grandparents were from Sicily. I have never been there so I would like to go. Whenever I'm in Italy people always ask me are you a little Italian? They can see it. I would like to take one of those DNA tests because it would be great to know where our exact lineage is from. I'm not sure of my father's roots. He is African American, but what does that actually mean? I would like to know exactly where I'm from.'

'There are so many babies born with nobody and having a son makes me now realise wow, what about those babies who for whatever reason are abandoned. Perhaps their mothers passed away and they have never known contact, that touch from their babyhood.
'I don't know if I wouldn't adopt I just don't know but it's a beautiful thing to do.'

'I really do enjoy cooking. I feel very at peace when I cook even though these days I don't cook a lot because there's often the question of do I sleep or do I cook? Definitely sleep.
'My favourite dish is soy maple salmon. It's salty and sweet and I always love a contrast.'

'When I went to college I had no idea what I wanted to study. I went for the experience and to find out what pulled me. Now if I went back I would study business and marketing. I'd like to understand the fundamentals behind the things I put in action every day. What are the mindsets and concepts?'
'My collaboration with Emelie Sande came about randomly and I love how things happen like that. I was celebrating the tenth anniversary of Songs In A Minor with four shows. One of them was in the Royal Albert Hall, London and I was looking for a support act. So I got turned on to her. There was one song called Breaking The Law. I played it 70 times, so I said let's have her open the show. We didn't meet each other that night.
'She was coming to New York and we ended up getting together and we decided to do some writing. It was instant chemistry. Rarely does it happen like that. She is a unique and important artist who will be around for a long time. We worked on three songs on this album which are all awesome.'

'My husband and I knew each other for years. We were both in the same industry. We first met when we were something like 16. I didn't have music out, I was just playing certain places and he was just starting on his music career.
'A high school friend of his ended up being a girl who was managed by the same people as me. That's how we ended up meeting and we used to hang out and say things like "Maybe we'll work together one day." We knew each other's music. We were in the same industry. It's cute that we knew each other when we were 16 but it was not an instant connection. You never know. Sometimes it takes years. It was a very slow burn but it does still burn and it's beautiful. We understand each other.
'I've never met someone who is like me and the more we are together the more I see we are alike. I've never met someone with whom I could be my whole self. I've always had to be part of myself with people, but with him I can be my whole self and he loves me when I am. And I love when he is his whole self.'

'Sometimes we walk into a room together an everyone gravitates towards him, and there are times when we walk into a room together and everyone gravitates towards me. He doesn't feel uncomfortable and I don't feel uncomfortable. I love it when people love him. And he loves when people love me. It's a really balanced thing we have and I'm so glad I don't have to pull back this part of myself, pull back that part. We can just be "Here's me." It's pretty special and now with our beautiful Egypt we just thank each other every day.'

Hot List:

Best book you've read recently?
It's Isabelle Allende's book about Haiti. Unbelievable.

What music are you listening to?
A lot of Afro-Cuban, Fela Kuti, Frank Ocean, Emile Sande and Alabama Shakes.

What are you wearing?
I'm in love with Givenchy. Also I love to wear sweat pants, low hanging tanks with heels.

Can't live without make-up product?
Eyeliner. Always have loved my eyeliner and always will. I like the make-up line called Tarte.

Item that you've most recently splashed out on?
I haven't but my husband bought a Morgan car. It's a 1940s meets futuristic body style. Hand made and incredible. I'll gladly hop in the driver's seat and drive that bad boy.

Style icon?
Bianca Jagger.

City?
Of course it's New York. But outside of that Barcelona.

Unfulfilled ambition?
I have so many. I want to be able to try new passions, do things I don't even know yet. I want to learn.

It's midnight and there's a bank of paparazzi in front of me surrounding Alicia Keys' trailer like big fat flies with big fat lenses. They jostle and push, they feel very threatening.

I have just seen Alicia perform at St. John's, Smith Square, the Black Ball. There's been dinner, auctions, all to raise money and awareness for her charity Keep A Child Alive. There was a performance from Keys which was intimate and emotionally direct in a way that she's made her own. Whether it's on stage or on song, Keys can get you right in the heart.

Even my agitated mood had dissipated: I'd been waiting to interview her since 4.30pm that day, hence the agitation. I could have interviewed her after I'd been waiting about an hour, but that would have been while she was having her make-up done. I'd met Keys many times before. I wanted to talk to her properly, not while her eyes were shut to accommodate a make-up brush.

She's on a world tour and she's pregnant. I didn't know she was pregnant at the time though. It was announced the following day, but I had a funny feeling… but more of that later.

Eventually I'm inside the trailer. Keys and her hair stylist, assistant, and several other integrals, all shout my name loud and cheer me in. You can't be agitated with Keys for long. She'll always find a way to melt it.

The trailer is a symphony of fawn and beige leatherette; dark and dank - chunks of newly cut hair from Keys' hairpiece are on the floor. She says, "It's like being in jail in here."

She sprays herself with some Dolce & Gabbana, telling me she wants to mask the smell of performance. The smell is sweet, heady, a little bit salty. Performance was better.

She's wearing a black draped, off the shoulder dress with a fabric corsage. Her shoes are ruffled platform sandals. I've seen her in many incarnations before. When she first started out she never wore a dress because she thought that was too vulnerable and too attention grabbing - there was always that paradox. And her hair was in braids. It seems a long time ago. In those days she was defensive and never wanted to reveal anything to anybody, be it friend, lover or interviewer.

She wrote her first song at 13 when she was coming to terms with the death of her grandfather. Her debut Songs In A Minor was one of the biggest selling debut albums ever. She has continued to be relentlessly successful, each album outstripping the last; and Empire State Of Mind is an inescapable modern classic, probably the most played single of the past year.

The first time I interviewed her there was no PR machine. I just turned up at the appointed time. This time I'm aware there is Alicia Keys the corporation, the entourage, the minders, a machine that's rolling and controlling. I wonder if she feels separate from herself and just how is it to be inside the giant phenomenon that is Alicia Keys? "I don't really have a gauge on it in the sense that I don't know how it appears to other people. I don't think I understand that too much because I don't think I like that. I'm also hell bent on normalcy to the extent where people are like, 'Alicia, you are delusional'."

Keys really doesn't like the unreal stuff, or the paparazzis outside. She says, "That's London in particular I have to say. If it were everywhere like that I would possibly become violent. But since it's just here in London you can smile through it and go 'wow, weird'. The other day they were following us in a car and I could really see how it happened with Princess Diana. They could really kill someone because it's dangerous and I was really freaked out by that."

This time round she played two nights at the O2 Arena which houses 20,000 people. "It's unbelievable," she says. And she really does seem shocked at herself. "I'm thinking what am I doing, two nights at that venue." Keys has always wanted this kind of success - success is what gets you appreciated. Success came from being strong, in control, and throughout her teenage years she'd carry a knife to protect herself on the streets of Hell's Kitchen, New York, where she grew up. It was a metaphor that she didn't need anybody.

She was brought up by her mother, part Italian, part English, part Scottish, Terri Augello, an actress who worked long hours often until midnight as a paralegal. There was lots of alone time which harnessed her self-sufficiency. Her father was African American Craig Cook, a flight attendant turned masseuse. Her parents were never married and never lived together, but were amicable. Cook's parents called Augello their "daughter-in-love." Keys' relationship with her father was minimal until recently.

Her songs and her diary which she still writes to this day are like therapy to her. Songwriting is her confessor. She once told me, "Most times your blessings are also your curses. And for me this is my ability to express myself so clearly with pen and paper, but when it comes to expressing myself verbally with a person I have a big wall I put up there." Since then she's worked to rethread that pattern and become more emotionally articulate and open.

She is very open when she talks. She'll let you see exactly what's going on in her head. She'll let you feel her thinking. But she's not very good about telling you about other things and people.

This album took only three months, it usually takes her much much longer to finish a record. "I don't know what happened. I think I'm more playful in my attitude and my approach. I'm still a perfectionist, but just not so serious. It used to be I would never take a weekend trip or hang out. I think it's a New York mentality, there's a certain grind. An empire state of grind!"

Christian Louboutin steps into the trailer, exuberant because he auctioned the shoes that he designed for her and another pair for Beyoncé, and was one of the most popular lots. He is wearing shoes covered in metal spikes. The atmosphere is almost euphoric with the success of the evening. Keys seems to be soft and relaxed. I remember there was a time when she never used to drink coffee in case it affected her too intensely.

"I like it like a baby, with so much milk and sugar it's more milk and sugar than coffee." I tell her that there's a psychological test which means how you like your coffee is supposed to symbolise your attitude towards sex, so basically this must mean she likes it hardly at all. "Oh that's totally wrong," she giggles in a totally naughty way.

You believe Keys when she talks about her charity, that she deeply cares and didn't pick it up like a must have pair of shoes of the season. She's been involved with Keep A Child Alive since 2002. "When 9/11 happened it was like, 'What's going on in the world?'" Consciousness in America shifted to fear and self-protection, but Keys thought of it in a different way. She wanted to know what was going on in the whole world.

"I wanted to know what was going on in Africa. I went to Africa to do a performance and I was so ecstastic to be known in Africa at that time. I had a phenomenal time learning about Africa, it was like school. There was a ton of information for me to digest. Then I met people my age who are dealing with hell, and I thought I can do something here, I want to do something special."
Keys was preparing to go to South Africa to perform at the opening of the World Cup hoping that all the glamour surrounding international football stars will bring out the extreme contrast of the people in South Africa and what they might be going through, particular with their fight against disease, to get HIV medication and extreme poverty.

"The contrast is the beauty of it. It's very positive to have the world cup happening in Africa. The whole world is turning to look at Africa at this event. Time (magazine) is doing a conference out there which will bring world leaders to Africa to talk about how businesses can partner. It could be an empowering time, but it's important to think all these billion of dollars that are being pumped into the world cup for two weeks, couldn't we just pump a few million of those dollars into something that is an issue every day."

We saw films before tonight's performance of villages that can be built out of shipment containers. A woman with HIV with young children who needed antiretrovirals to save her life. Then we saw her a few months later happy, rounder faced and able to be a mother to her children.

Keys says, "I try my best just to engage people in a way that's simple so that you don't think an Aids epidemic is only over there. It's a very simple concept: here is the existing medicine, people take it and it brings them back to life. I've seen kids that were on the verge of death and then a few years later they are jumping around. "

It's not just dogma or a speech. When she says it, it hits you and you feel her voice like a melody. Life is injected into charity fatigue when she talks and I wonder if working with these children, some of whom have been infected with the Aids virus from family members who have abused them, has made her feel broody.

"Oh," she says looking a little startled. I realise now I asked the question as if I knew something, so she must have been flustered, but answered in a way that would cover if I did know or I didn't. "I love children and I love family and I love that interaction. Because I had a really close relationship with my mother I understand that deep powerful love, and it's so beautiful. So as a mother to a child is the most brilliant gift, it's gorgeous."

Are you ready for your own children? "Yes. I'm definitely in a place where I have a different sensibility about things. I remember how I used to be. I'm going on the road and I'm back when I'm back and I'm probably gone a long time. I felt that that's what I needed to do and there was nothing more important than reaching that place I saw in my head. Nothing could stop me. There was no amount of love. There was no amount of nothing that could drag me down. That was then. And now there is a desire in me to have more stability. I never think I've reached that pinnacle so to speak, but I do feel satisfied with what I've been able to achieve, so I don't feel this endless need I've got to get there, I've got to get there."

And what's that been replaced with? "I've got to get peace. I have to be peaceful and I have to be happy. I think sometimes we confuse success with happiness. It's easy to do because you figure that success is going to make you happy."

And if it doesn't make you happy there's a crisis. "I think it screws a lot of people up, totally fucks them bad."

How does she negotiate that one? "I don't have a ton of friends but the friends I have are great ones. I don't have huge family but the family I have is a great one. I have solid decent people around me and I believe that is all it is because you will get destroyed if you have people bringing you down."

Keys seems to have given up on the idea that she can control everything. Much is made of the fact that she never talks specifically about her personal life. For a while nobody knew if she liked girls or boys. She was adamant that that wouldn't become public property, part of a publicity machine that would steamroller her. But gradually that's changed and she allowed herself to be papped with producer supremo fiancé Swizz Beatz. She used to be able to freeze away paparazzi by a certain don't go there I'm not who you think I am stare. She doesn't even try to pull one of those now. Perhaps being relaxed and in love was why her latest album was conceived in playfulness.

In a way she has always spoken from her heart and how she's feeling in that moment. It's more interesting to hear her say that "being in love feels to her like the first sunrise ever seen from earth" than the name of her boyfriend and what they did last night.

I wonder if her non-relationship with her father helped create the emotional reticence that appears now to be dissolving. Has she got closer to him? "I would say that in the process of growing you sometimes realise you hold on to anger. I was angry then and I'm sure I had the right to be angry, but if you hold on to all this anger the only person you're hurting is you."

Did he come back into your life? Or how did you decide to give up the anger? "It came from my grandmother being ill. That was his mother and it caused a shift in the family dynamic." She was incredibly close to her grandmother who died in 2006. She was with her on the night she died. She told me that they were so close she didn't just look like her, she embodied her.

"You realise what's important when you see a person you love so dearly and you're not going to have them for long. It was important for her and I thought well, what is all this stuff. I saw his love for her and I saw that he didn't mean any harm. He wasn't being an evil person. Sometimes things don't work out and it's difficult to figure out how to put it all together."

Does she think she saw it all through her mother's eyes as she was so close to her? "I'm sure that was some of it, and just consistency was lacking at times. But I became more understanding and I said here is my beautiful grandmother, we can start from this point on, we can be cordial. We can be friends. I can start to understand you and you can start to understand me.

"I think one of the most difficult things for human beings is to learn how to let it go because you want to hold on and on and you seem to be the only one that's fighting."

How does she let go now? "One is journalising. I like a place where you can be brutally honest. And I've also found I really enjoy meditating and chanting. The other thing is I try to be really direct with what I'm feeling. I will talk directly about and say 'I've got to say this shit' and then I can let it go.

"It was very difficult to be honest with myself because I was 'I am steel, nothing hurts me, I'm impenetrable, nothing can touch me', but I'm over that now."

So she goes from steel to silk? "Definitely I do, although a lot of times I revert back to my steel and think, 'Oh no, I don't want to be in this steel thing'. I recognise it a bit more. The triggers are pure fatigue, my patience goes."

She's looking forward to not being fatigued, taking time out. "I have a whole list of places I wanted to travel. I've promised myself a trip to Israel, but I don't know if it will be this summer."

She hugs me goodbye, still smelling of performance mixed with Dolce & Gabbana Light Blue. It's a proper hug with proper soul in it. She will always be working on shedding those layers rather than building barriers, even if her publicist is doing the opposite. And that peace she was looking for? She may well have found it.

I meet Jennifer Saunders just outside the theatre where Viva - the Spice Girls musical which she is wrote - is rehearsing. We are to have a late breakfast. She arrives in a camouflage jacket with diamond studs and a multi-coloured scarf, choppy blonde hair and an alarmingly fresh face and her usual slightly peering eyes. She announces, 'I'm so hung over. I think I still have a level of alcohol in my blood. By lunchtime I'll be tired.'
She had a weekend party and this morning has been looking after her new grandson Freddie and coos she has been in bed with the baby. 'I had a proper little cuddle. He's divine.
'When he enters the room everyone starts looking at him and when he leaves the room people start looking at pictures of them on the phone. I don't know what type of child he will grow up to be because he has people worshipping him all the time - Freddie worship. The other girls love him too.' Freddie is the son of her eldest daughter Ella.
Saunders seems to have no worries about being a grandmother at 54. 'I absolutely love it. People say isn't it weird seeing your baby having a baby and it kind of isn't. It doesn't feel weird at all. I love having a baby around and I never had a boy child. I did want a boy child because I had this romantic idea that a boy child when he's 16 takes his mother out for dinner. I think I once saw that in a restaurant, a boy taking out his mother for her birthday. I'm going to have to force Freddie to do that now.'
We discuss the lack of stress in the grandparent grandchild relationship. 'I haven't got the responsibility of sending him to school or telling him off. He's simply there to be worshipped.'
She thinks it's a strange time for an interview, not quite breakfast, not quite lunch (11am). We order scrambled eggs and toast, perfect hangover food, but the Café Zedel can't cook until lunchtime and instead they offer us boiled eggs and giant pastries, pain au chocolats the size of brogues.
Saunders is amused, her face arranges itself into a supercilious giggle. She offers a similar expression when I ask wasn't she surprised to be asked to write Viva Forever! The Spice Girls musical after French and Saunders had mercilessly sent up The Spice Girls in their spoof The Sugar Lumps and the Mamma Mia sketch they did for Comic Relief - Mamma Mia creator Judy Craymer is the impresaria behind Viva.
Craymer called Saunders' agent to see if she was interested and that was deemed to be a very good sign. 'It meant a) she doesn't take herself too seriously, and b) she has a good sense of humour. I immediately thought I am the one who is going to do this. No one else is going to do this. I have to do this thing.
'When Dawn and I were The Sugar Lumps we always used to go to Spice Girls shows. My girls loved them and I thought I don't want someone to mess this up for my girls.
'I don't have a favourite Spice, I love all of them. Well, maybe my favourite is Emma because I've worked with her a lot, but Mel C is also delightful. When you see them now they just are that same gang, they fit into all those roles again. A little bit badly behaved, a little bit loud. You never felt they had to behave. That's what I always loved about them.
'Victoria is really funny. She's the most naturally witty one. She doesn't take herself seriously, she just looks as though she does.
'I love Geri's energy. I love Mel B's refusal to say anything she doesn't mean. And the truth is I love the songs. And they actually have their own narrative which makes it easier to write around.
'There were certain themes, here's me and my mates, don't fuck with me and my mates, let's misbehave. And then a story came.
'Loosely the story is adopted girl, mother wants to let her go, can't let her go, is over protective, and then…
'She doesn't really want to find her biological mother but she's on a TV talent show that thinks it would be a really good idea. You see it on X Factor. They have chosen the one with the story.'
Did she conceive this idea when her own daughters were leaving home? 'No, but I have had that empty nest syndrome. When the girls left it was a slow grieving process. you go, oh look, we're just on our own again. It's my husband and me. Oh, What do we do now? "Good Morning." "Yes, good morning to you".' She says this pulling her awkward face. She and husband Ade Edmondson have been married for 27 years and the period of just them together in a big house has not been prolonged as he is about to tour with two different bands, The Bad Shepherds and The Idiot Bastard Band.
'Gradually you adjust. You miss them. You miss their friends too. You miss the general hubbub of people always being there.
'I didn't think about empty nests when I was writing this. It was more having to let someone go out and make their own mistakes. You can't learn from other people's mistakes.'
Was it based on the relationship she had with her mother? 'No, that relationship was much more old fashioned. I mean you would call your mother's friends Mrs. Nowadays you would call everyone by their Christian name. it was quite formal and I am emotional with my kids. They see the shit as well as the good. I was brought up really well. I had boundaries where if you crossed the line you know you are in trouble. I think my kids sort of get that.
'I don't think I was a great rebel except in my head. I've never been able to do rows. I cannot do confrontation. You know that fight or flight thing? I'm flight. I just don't want the argument.'
Eggs arrive. At first we don't know if they are hard-boiled or soft-boiled. Saunders takes it and attempts to peel it, pauses, 'If it cracks now we're in shit.' It's a cold hard-boiled egg.
She says that after her father died of cancer eight years ago the dynamic changed in the relationship with her mother. 'We became much closer. She is a coper. She was born to cope. She is strong and funny. She had a stroke and I was there. She forgets words and cries with laughter when the wrong ones come out. We literally laughed her way through the stroke. By the time the paramedics arrived she was crying real tears of laughter, probably to do with relief. But she said, "Will you go up to the donkey upstairs and bring down my…" The donkey? She meant draws. She just laughed and laughed. She recovered well because she's a doer and a coper.'
Saunders moved to Devon to bring up her children and now lives mostly in London, the reverse of most people.

It is very rare for Saunders to look right at you. Most of the time she mumbles into her scarf or looks away, allowing me to get a good look at her skin which is dewy smooth, hardly any wrinkles.
The idea for Viva came up in 2009. They narrowed it down to which songs they wanted to use and she started to write the treatment.
'I think we started in January, so I was three months into chemotherapy,' she says matter of factly. She has never overplayed her cancer, never come over the victim. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in October 2009. She has never used the word battle and I feel would wince if it was ever used for her. It's one of those things that she probably didn't like to confront, she shrugged it off because she's a coper.
How was it possible to write on chemo? 'I don't know. Luckily Judy was very sympathetic. I remember struggling to organise my thoughts. When you are doing chemo you have a load of time. I just thought I am not not going to do this job and by the time I'm finished it everything will be fine. Judy would be so brilliant she would come round the house with a bottle of vodka and the tunes and we would sit and drink.'
Vodka and chemo? 'Oh yes,' she says jauntily. Really? 'Oh yes. You can drink when you are doing chemo. You've got so much shit in your body you may as well be drunk. We sat and listened to the songs endlessly and it was so helpful.
'Why do we need to listen to these songs again and again? She was right. It's the only way in.'
Most people might lie down and vomit. Singing Spice Girls songs and writing a musical does sound a rather extraordinary way to get through chemo. It sounds superhuman.
'No, not really. Some people hold down full-time jobs. I didn't have a vomit problem. Didn't feel vomity at all. I ha brilliant anti-sickness medication and it worked. For some people it works well and some people it doesn't. I was very lucky. There are some days when you feel a bit grim and other days, you know, towards the end of a session, okay and you know it's not killing you. Just makes you feel rotten.'
I note the way she doesn't say I she says you to distance herself from it but I am struck by her strength and bravery. I just did a week of antibiotics and felt suicidal.
What is it really like? 'You feel chemical, that's what you feel. You feel you are part of a big chemical thing but you tell yourself it's a cure not a disease and you've got to get rid of the disease. The chemo is the belt and braces. It feels shit when it's working.
'You think, yes I feel absolutely shit, it's doing its job and you just get on with it, you get on with stuff.'
Did she have any paranoia moments of depression? 'No. sometimes you feel horrible. Sometimes you feel emotional. And then sometimes when you see your skin goes to fuck you have moments where you think I hate this. But there's always a point where you think you might as well get over it and life gets back vaguely to normal.'
Are things normal? Has she finished the meds? 'No, you don't finish. I'm still on hormone therapy and I'll be on that for the rest of my life. It's the reverse of HRT, it takes all your hormones away. It takes all your oestrogen away because what I can't have is oestrogen because my cancer is oestrogen sensitive. You go on to tamoxifen or some other oestrogen therapy which takes the hormones our so you are basically in menopause. You are from the moment you start chemo because it kills everything.
'In a funny way, more than the actual chemo, which I found was a grit your teeth and get through it kind of thing, I found the hormone thing a more subtle change and it was much harder to take. You are plunged into menopause. It makes you depressed. That whole side of you, what it is to be a woman, which is hormones, it just goes. You have to get through it but it takes a while.
'It took me a year on tamoxifen to get used to it, to not be grieving for your oestrogen. It's an odd thing but I found that much harder than chemo. It's the thing they least warn you about. They go right, now we go on tamoxifen and everything will be fine. You have to do it. I hated the tamoxifen when I first got on it. I don't hate it now because I'm adjusted to it. I thought there has to be something else.
'I went to the doctor and asked him: Is there another drug? He is the most brilliant doctor and he explained to me: If you were my wife I would insist you take this. And he explained: What it needs is someone to really explain how important it is to you and the side effects. They are quite psychological but also physical. And I honestly imagined that I would very quickly turn into a very small leather handbag.' She makes a creaking sound of a small leather thing.
Having an instant menopause rather than a gradual thing seems to be the most difficult thing for her. 'I get very depressed and I'm still on anti-depressants. I see it as you need to boost yourself up because suddenly you have no oestrogen and your serotonin goes down, everything depletes and you start thinking…' She makes a moaning sound. 'So take a bit of anti-depressant and it's fine again. It's a juggling act, isn't it, what to put in and what not to, but I find I am happy now.
'I am free of cancer. I did this thing the other day where my doctor said do you want to have a big scan. You know when some people have cancer they are totally neurotic and worried about it coming back, which has never bothered actually because I just say it's not coming back, it's fine.
'But he said, you know your insurance will pay for you to have a full MRI, CAT and all these other scans and it's two years since you've finished your treatment. Two years is the peak of possible recurrence, so I went and did it. The weird thing is I've never been to a hospital in my life until the cancer thing, but I kind of like going into clinics now. Oh, I'm going into this one and that one. Do take some blood. I find it kind of reassuring.
'I did grieve a bit when I wasn't having the chemo any more. I was used to sitting in the little chair and then the nurse would come and do it. It was like that was your job for that long and it was reassuring. So the thought of one of these scans made me think "Oh that would be quite nice, won't it." You get injections, go a bit radioactive, then you get put in the big banging machine for a bit. I actually quite enjoyed it.'
I tell that is kind of weird and she must have been deprived of attention as a child in a big way. She laughs, 'Yes. But I do love that stuff now. Bang, bang, bang, oh it's my turn.'
Actually she is the opposite of attention seeking. She kept her cancer quiet until she had finished her chemo. She had been seen a couple of times but no one guessed she was wearing a wig. 'I had very good wigs. Two of them. One was a real hair wig which was a lot of trouble. I was lucky in that most of the chemo happened during the winter so you could just wear hats. I didn't mind that aspect of it.
'What is weird is all of your hair falls out. Everything. Your eyebrows. Your pubic hair. Your leg hair, arm hair, your nose hair. The weirdest thing is your nose hair because you are constantly snivelling and you get nose bleeds a lot. You are a bald person with a nose bleed. I didn't mind that and it's a funny thing. Of all the things to care about my hair was the least thing I cared about. At least I didn't have to have a wax for the best part of a year.
'Hair grows back and it comes back everywhere. I was looking at my face and thinking it's so hairy. Suddenly everywhere was hairy.'
We try to order toast instead of the giant pastries. Instead a waiter arrives with bread. Everything we ordered had been got wrong. 'This is the most hilarious breakfast I've ever had.'
Soon she must go to the theatre for a run through. Did the Spice Girls have any changes they wanted to make? 'No, nothing like that. They could make suggestions but generally they were enthusiastic and nice.'
After this what else does she have coming up? 'I'm thinking about a film of AbFab on the basis that The Inbetweeners was a successful film. I don't know about doing more telly. I'm thinking of setting it in the South of France. I always imagine the Riviera life, that search for the nostalgic idea of glamour… It's hard for me to think beyond press night at the moment.'
She still rides horses although not as much as she used to. 'Ade said, "You've had a good run, but if you fall off…" And he was like: Just stop. At the moment I've just started with a power plate. It's a thing that jiggles you stand on it and do certain positions. I've also tried to start jogging. But I walk my dog a lot.'
Her dog is a whippet called Olive. 'She's the most beautiful dog in the world. Everyone knows Olive. The other day I was at the station in Devon and I had Olive and there was a woman who looked at Olive and recognised her. "Oh, it must be Jennifer Saunders because this is Olive."' She puts on proud dog mother face which is very similar to proud grandmother.
Her skin does not look grandmother like. 'It's ridiculous that I'm a grandmother but it's the nicest thing. Sometimes I do think a bit of Botox might be good but I haven't done anything. I think I should really give up drinking for a bit then I'd lose weight, but then I think I can't be bothered. It's just so nice to have a drink.'

© Chrissy Iley 2012
I meet Jennifer Saunders just outside the theatre where Viva - the Spice Girls musical which she is wrote - is rehearsing. We are to have a late breakfast. She arrives in a camouflage jacket with diamond studs and a multi-coloured scarf, choppy blonde hair and an alarmingly fresh face and her usual slightly peering eyes. She announces, 'I'm so hung over. I think I still have a level of alcohol in my blood. By lunchtime I'll be tired.'
She had a weekend party and this morning has been looking after her new grandson Freddie and coos she has been in bed with the baby. 'I had a proper little cuddle. He's divine.
'When he enters the room everyone starts looking at him and when he leaves the room people start looking at pictures of them on the phone. I don't know what type of child he will grow up to be because he has people worshipping him all the time - Freddie worship. The other girls love him too.' Freddie is the son of her eldest daughter Ella.
Saunders seems to have no worries about being a grandmother at 54. 'I absolutely love it. People say isn't it weird seeing your baby having a baby and it kind of isn't. It doesn't feel weird at all. I love having a baby around and I never had a boy child. I did want a boy child because I had this romantic idea that a boy child when he's 16 takes his mother out for dinner. I think I once saw that in a restaurant, a boy taking out his mother for her birthday. I'm going to have to force Freddie to do that now.'
We discuss the lack of stress in the grandparent grandchild relationship. 'I haven't got the responsibility of sending him to school or telling him off. He's simply there to be worshipped.'
She thinks it's a strange time for an interview, not quite breakfast, not quite lunch (11am). We order scrambled eggs and toast, perfect hangover food, but the Café Zedel can't cook until lunchtime and instead they offer us boiled eggs and giant pastries, pain au chocolats the size of brogues.
Saunders is amused, her face arranges itself into a supercilious giggle. She offers a similar expression when I ask wasn't she surprised to be asked to write Viva Forever! The Spice Girls musical after French and Saunders had mercilessly sent up The Spice Girls in their spoof The Sugar Lumps and the Mamma Mia sketch they did for Comic Relief - Mamma Mia creator Judy Craymer is the impresaria behind Viva.
Craymer called Saunders' agent to see if she was interested and that was deemed to be a very good sign. 'It meant a) she doesn't take herself too seriously, and b) she has a good sense of humour. I immediately thought I am the one who is going to do this. No one else is going to do this. I have to do this thing.
'When Dawn and I were The Sugar Lumps we always used to go to Spice Girls shows. My girls loved them and I thought I don't want someone to mess this up for my girls.
'I don't have a favourite Spice, I love all of them. Well, maybe my favourite is Emma because I've worked with her a lot, but Mel C is also delightful. When you see them now they just are that same gang, they fit into all those roles again. A little bit badly behaved, a little bit loud. You never felt they had to behave. That's what I always loved about them.
'Victoria is really funny. She's the most naturally witty one. She doesn't take herself seriously, she just looks as though she does.
'I love Geri's energy. I love Mel B's refusal to say anything she doesn't mean. And the truth is I love the songs. And they actually have their own narrative which makes it easier to write around.
'There were certain themes, here's me and my mates, don't fuck with me and my mates, let's misbehave. And then a story came.
'Loosely the story is adopted girl, mother wants to let her go, can't let her go, is over protective, and then…
'She doesn't really want to find her biological mother but she's on a TV talent show that thinks it would be a really good idea. You see it on X Factor. They have chosen the one with the story.'
Did she conceive this idea when her own daughters were leaving home? 'No, but I have had that empty nest syndrome. When the girls left it was a slow grieving process. you go, oh look, we're just on our own again. It's my husband and me. Oh, What do we do now? "Good Morning." "Yes, good morning to you".' She says this pulling her awkward face. She and husband Ade Edmondson have been married for 27 years and the period of just them together in a big house has not been prolonged as he is about to tour with two different bands, The Bad Shepherds and The Idiot Bastard Band.
'Gradually you adjust. You miss them. You miss their friends too. You miss the general hubbub of people always being there.
'I didn't think about empty nests when I was writing this. It was more having to let someone go out and make their own mistakes. You can't learn from other people's mistakes.'
Was it based on the relationship she had with her mother? 'No, that relationship was much more old fashioned. I mean you would call your mother's friends Mrs. Nowadays you would call everyone by their Christian name. it was quite formal and I am emotional with my kids. They see the shit as well as the good. I was brought up really well. I had boundaries where if you crossed the line you know you are in trouble. I think my kids sort of get that.
'I don't think I was a great rebel except in my head. I've never been able to do rows. I cannot do confrontation. You know that fight or flight thing? I'm flight. I just don't want the argument.'
Eggs arrive. At first we don't know if they are hard-boiled or soft-boiled. Saunders takes it and attempts to peel it, pauses, 'If it cracks now we're in shit.' It's a cold hard-boiled egg.
She says that after her father died of cancer eight years ago the dynamic changed in the relationship with her mother. 'We became much closer. She is a coper. She was born to cope. She is strong and funny. She had a stroke and I was there. She forgets words and cries with laughter when the wrong ones come out. We literally laughed her way through the stroke. By the time the paramedics arrived she was crying real tears of laughter, probably to do with relief. But she said, "Will you go up to the donkey upstairs and bring down my…" The donkey? She meant draws. She just laughed and laughed. She recovered well because she's a doer and a coper.'
Saunders moved to Devon to bring up her children and now lives mostly in London, the reverse of most people.

It is very rare for Saunders to look right at you. Most of the time she mumbles into her scarf or looks away, allowing me to get a good look at her skin which is dewy smooth, hardly any wrinkles.
The idea for Viva came up in 2009. They narrowed it down to which songs they wanted to use and she started to write the treatment.
'I think we started in January, so I was three months into chemotherapy,' she says matter of factly. She has never overplayed her cancer, never come over the victim. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in October 2009. She has never used the word battle and I feel would wince if it was ever used for her. It's one of those things that she probably didn't like to confront, she shrugged it off because she's a coper.
How was it possible to write on chemo? 'I don't know. Luckily Judy was very sympathetic. I remember struggling to organise my thoughts. When you are doing chemo you have a load of time. I just thought I am not not going to do this job and by the time I'm finished it everything will be fine. Judy would be so brilliant she would come round the house with a bottle of vodka and the tunes and we would sit and drink.'
Vodka and chemo? 'Oh yes,' she says jauntily. Really? 'Oh yes. You can drink when you are doing chemo. You've got so much shit in your body you may as well be drunk. We sat and listened to the songs endlessly and it was so helpful.
'Why do we need to listen to these songs again and again? She was right. It's the only way in.'
Most people might lie down and vomit. Singing Spice Girls songs and writing a musical does sound a rather extraordinary way to get through chemo. It sounds superhuman.
'No, not really. Some people hold down full-time jobs. I didn't have a vomit problem. Didn't feel vomity at all. I ha brilliant anti-sickness medication and it worked. For some people it works well and some people it doesn't. I was very lucky. There are some days when you feel a bit grim and other days, you know, towards the end of a session, okay and you know it's not killing you. Just makes you feel rotten.'
I note the way she doesn't say I she says you to distance herself from it but I am struck by her strength and bravery. I just did a week of antibiotics and felt suicidal.
What is it really like? 'You feel chemical, that's what you feel. You feel you are part of a big chemical thing but you tell yourself it's a cure not a disease and you've got to get rid of the disease. The chemo is the belt and braces. It feels shit when it's working.
'You think, yes I feel absolutely shit, it's doing its job and you just get on with it, you get on with stuff.'
Did she have any paranoia moments of depression? 'No. sometimes you feel horrible. Sometimes you feel emotional. And then sometimes when you see your skin goes to fuck you have moments where you think I hate this. But there's always a point where you think you might as well get over it and life gets back vaguely to normal.'
Are things normal? Has she finished the meds? 'No, you don't finish. I'm still on hormone therapy and I'll be on that for the rest of my life. It's the reverse of HRT, it takes all your hormones away. It takes all your oestrogen away because what I can't have is oestrogen because my cancer is oestrogen sensitive. You go on to tamoxifen or some other oestrogen therapy which takes the hormones our so you are basically in menopause. You are from the moment you start chemo because it kills everything.
'In a funny way, more than the actual chemo, which I found was a grit your teeth and get through it kind of thing, I found the hormone thing a more subtle change and it was much harder to take. You are plunged into menopause. It makes you depressed. That whole side of you, what it is to be a woman, which is hormones, it just goes. You have to get through it but it takes a while.
'It took me a year on tamoxifen to get used to it, to not be grieving for your oestrogen. It's an odd thing but I found that much harder than chemo. It's the thing they least warn you about. They go right, now we go on tamoxifen and everything will be fine. You have to do it. I hated the tamoxifen when I first got on it. I don't hate it now because I'm adjusted to it. I thought there has to be something else.
'I went to the doctor and asked him: Is there another drug? He is the most brilliant doctor and he explained to me: If you were my wife I would insist you take this. And he explained: What it needs is someone to really explain how important it is to you and the side effects. They are quite psychological but also physical. And I honestly imagined that I would very quickly turn into a very small leather handbag.' She makes a creaking sound of a small leather thing.
Having an instant menopause rather than a gradual thing seems to be the most difficult thing for her. 'I get very depressed and I'm still on anti-depressants. I see it as you need to boost yourself up because suddenly you have no oestrogen and your serotonin goes down, everything depletes and you start thinking…' She makes a moaning sound. 'So take a bit of anti-depressant and it's fine again. It's a juggling act, isn't it, what to put in and what not to, but I find I am happy now.
'I am free of cancer. I did this thing the other day where my doctor said do you want to have a big scan. You know when some people have cancer they are totally neurotic and worried about it coming back, which has never bothered actually because I just say it's not coming back, it's fine.
'But he said, you know your insurance will pay for you to have a full MRI, CAT and all these other scans and it's two years since you've finished your treatment. Two years is the peak of possible recurrence, so I went and did it. The weird thing is I've never been to a hospital in my life until the cancer thing, but I kind of like going into clinics now. Oh, I'm going into this one and that one. Do take some blood. I find it kind of reassuring.
'I did grieve a bit when I wasn't having the chemo any more. I was used to sitting in the little chair and then the nurse would come and do it. It was like that was your job for that long and it was reassuring. So the thought of one of these scans made me think "Oh that would be quite nice, won't it." You get injections, go a bit radioactive, then you get put in the big banging machine for a bit. I actually quite enjoyed it.'
I tell that is kind of weird and she must have been deprived of attention as a child in a big way. She laughs, 'Yes. But I do love that stuff now. Bang, bang, bang, oh it's my turn.'
Actually she is the opposite of attention seeking. She kept her cancer quiet until she had finished her chemo. She had been seen a couple of times but no one guessed she was wearing a wig. 'I had very good wigs. Two of them. One was a real hair wig which was a lot of trouble. I was lucky in that most of the chemo happened during the winter so you could just wear hats. I didn't mind that aspect of it.
'What is weird is all of your hair falls out. Everything. Your eyebrows. Your pubic hair. Your leg hair, arm hair, your nose hair. The weirdest thing is your nose hair because you are constantly snivelling and you get nose bleeds a lot. You are a bald person with a nose bleed. I didn't mind that and it's a funny thing. Of all the things to care about my hair was the least thing I cared about. At least I didn't have to have a wax for the best part of a year.
'Hair grows back and it comes back everywhere. I was looking at my face and thinking it's so hairy. Suddenly everywhere was hairy.'
We try to order toast instead of the giant pastries. Instead a waiter arrives with bread. Everything we ordered had been got wrong. 'This is the most hilarious breakfast I've ever had.'
Soon she must go to the theatre for a run through. Did the Spice Girls have any changes they wanted to make? 'No, nothing like that. They could make suggestions but generally they were enthusiastic and nice.'
After this what else does she have coming up? 'I'm thinking about a film of AbFab on the basis that The Inbetweeners was a successful film. I don't know about doing more telly. I'm thinking of setting it in the South of France. I always imagine the Riviera life, that search for the nostalgic idea of glamour… It's hard for me to think beyond press night at the moment.'
She still rides horses although not as much as she used to. 'Ade said, "You've had a good run, but if you fall off…" And he was like: Just stop. At the moment I've just started with a power plate. It's a thing that jiggles you stand on it and do certain positions. I've also tried to start jogging. But I walk my dog a lot.'
Her dog is a whippet called Olive. 'She's the most beautiful dog in the world. Everyone knows Olive. The other day I was at the station in Devon and I had Olive and there was a woman who looked at Olive and recognised her. "Oh, it must be Jennifer Saunders because this is Olive."' She puts on proud dog mother face which is very similar to proud grandmother.
Her skin does not look grandmother like. 'It's ridiculous that I'm a grandmother but it's the nicest thing. Sometimes I do think a bit of Botox might be good but I haven't done anything. I think I should really give up drinking for a bit then I'd lose weight, but then I think I can't be bothered. It's just so nice to have a drink.'

I had waited a long time to interview Seth MacFarlane. Years. His creation Family Guy had been a long time addiction. It always took me by surprise. It always punched below the belt. Usually outrageously cruel, but occasionally it has heart. Bit like MacFarlane himself.
MacFarlane was hard to pin down, possibly because he doesn't feel he needs to sell himself, or his movie Ted which is destined to become one of the year's most successful.
On stage he is self-deprecating. I'd seen him perform his album of songs from the 1950s and 1960s with a big band. He told the audience how people mistake him for Donny Osmond because of his big white teeth, glossy dark hair and all-American square-jawed shiny face.
There is shyness and surliness to him. When I eventually met the highest paid writer in television he arrived an hour and a half late without an apology or explanation. I felt foolish for having admired him. And then I saw Ted.
This is MacFarlane's directorial debut and he also wrote it. It's a triangle between girlfriend, boyfriend - Mila Kunis and the wonderfully empathic Mark Wahlberg - and the teddy bear voiced by MacFarlane. It's the story of the tensions and ever-changing loyalties within the triangle and is unstoppably hilarious from start to finish.
It works on so many levels. It's razor sharp and emotionally sweet. It's unexpectedly kind and endlessly clever. MacFarlane has a flair for loving the targets he condemns. And there is something so unbelievably fantastic about a cuddly teddy bear who is racist, anti-gay and is constantly stoned.
We accept Ted as a living being as we accept with human girlfriends the talking dog in Family Guy. We accept that he was once a phenomenon (in 1985 he appeared on the Johnny Carson Show) but a couple of decades later he suffers the fate of all child stars living off substance abuse and shots and being codependent on his enabler Johnny played by Wahlberg, the man who can't face adulthood and prefers to hang out with his teddy.
We meet in a restaurant with beaded curtain booths, a hipster hangout in LA that happened to be near where he is finishing the latest cut of Ted. He arrives with an all-American big oblong-toothed smile. He knows he has a lot to smile about. His recent album Music Is Better Than Words was nominated for a Grammy, and Ted will be a movie phenomenon.
Family Guy, his animated series about the Griffin family, has now developed into a $2 billion franchise. His contract with Fox Television is said to be worth over $100 million. He is now 38 but at 24 he was the youngest ever executive producer of a TV series. In the world of animation he is king. But that's just part of the story.
As well as writing and directing Ted, he is of course the Boston accented voice of Ted. He put together all the music because he delights in a retro soundtrack. In Family Guy he loves to prepare 1950s tunes jaunty and conservative, with the politically incorrect satire for which Family Guy is renowned. Somehow the humour is more offensive against the backdrop of songs from The Sound Of Music.
MacFarlane has always loved the music of that era. Who knew he had an amazing voice? His album Music Is Better Than Words sees MacFarlane crooning some undiscovered classics of the big band era. His voice is a sheeny velvet. It's a heartfelt voice that's plaintive and questioning, which seems to be at variance with the person in front of me.
And the opposite of the foul mouthed boozing bear. He is many things that seem at odds with one another. He looks conservative in his black jeans, black coat and smooth skin. His expression gives away nothing. He doesn't seem his 38 years; he seems both younger and older.
I get the impression he's not an apologizing or explaining sort of guy. Later he says 'I'm always late' as if that's a given.
He was late for a plane once. American Airlines Flight 11 from Logan International, Boston to LA. It had been a party night the night before and he arrived at the airport 10 minutes late for a 7.45am flight. He can't remember if he was particularly disgruntled about not catching that plane. That plane was hijacked and was the first to crash into the Twin Towers on 9/11.
It doesn't stand out for him as a life changing moment and he doesn't think back to what could have been or that he must make every moment count, although maybe he does. He's been phenomenally successful. After Family Guy became a worldwide phenomenon he came up with another, American Dad, which debuted in 2005, and has been as popular and a newer one, The Cleveland Show, is carrying on the winning formula, which is to mix the offensive with the outrageous and not care what anyone thinks.
He doesn't believe in the spiritual or the mystical. He thinks he was late for that plane because he's always late.
He doesn't seem to worry if Ted will be a success, perhaps because he's sure of himself, or perhaps because he just doesn't care what anyone thinks. Or perhaps it's because he's tired, finishing the movie. 'I haven't slept in three days. It's been nuts.
He has a characteristic knack of juxtaposing the outrageous with the mundane. 'The idea was to treat the bear like he was another person. If you were reading the script you wouldn't necessarily know he was a teddy bear. You would assume he was a third individual. It's not animated. The bear is computer generated. It's very traditional in a lot of ways, and completely outside the box.'
That in itself is a rather appropriate way to describe MacFarlane: traditional from a happy suburban family on the East Coast, traditional education and grounding and a person who thinks completely outside the box.
American Dad is another surreal take on a dysfunctional family featuring a dad who is a CIA agent and a bitter and twisted gay alien who lives with them. Somehow MacFarlane has also managed to make this successful prime time TV.
Family Guy ridicules cliché in its many manifestations and somehow it takes the bizarre completely in its stride. MacFarlane not only created the series, he is the voice of three characters - the dad Peter Griffin, who is self-centred, stupid but sometimes sweet; the dog Brian, who takes his martinis dry and his human girlfriends babelicious blonde; and the baby Stewie - a Machiavellian maniacal baby whose voice has an old fashioned English accent like Rex Harrison, and who wants to destroy the world.
His real life voice is exactly the same as Brian the dog, over-mellow, juicy and with the rhythm and intonation of a 1950s game show host. If it were a food group it would be cheese.
After a while you get used to his unsettling self-confidence. Perhaps that comes from being a consistent over-achiever. He has never failed. He assumes the movie will work on the premise that no one is surprised that a teddy bear talks. 'If something like this really happened people would be astonished for six months, then they wouldn't give a shit.' His voice is very clear. The rhythm in which he speaks rarely pauses to re-examine a thought.
Did he have a cuddly teddy bear growing up that he felt close to? He raises an eyebrow, 'I didn't. (Judgmental pause). This is a work of fiction.'
He orders a Diet Coke and a coffee and says he doesn't want to eat. He doesn't touch his coffee or his Diet Coke. From the second he arrived he took out his phone to check the time. Compulsively. For someone who is consistently late he's strangely aware of time passing. He must know how late he is but because he's so much in his own world he doesn't seem to connect that with people waiting for him or planes taking off without him.
I tell him that I'm intrigued about how he missed dying in the Twin Towers. Does he think about death every day? 'No. I've missed tons of flights. I'm late for everything. Somebody misses just about every flight.' I'm sure he was the only one that missed that particular one. He shrugs and flashes his huge oblong teeth in a faux smile.
'I have just as much chance as anyone of missing a flight that has an accident happen on it. It could have been me. It could have been that guy. What's the difference? We all have the same chance. We (for this read other people) love attaching significance to things. Some things are literally coincidences. I went to the airport. I couldn't get on the flight. I didn't complain. I was exhausted and hung over. Jack (Daniels) had made an appearance the night before.'
Perhaps he was attracted to animation because he can draw everything just the way he likes it. He can control how people relate. He started drawing from a very young age. He drew his first Fred Flintstone when he was two. 'Terrible, but recognisable. My parents saved all those drawings. I had a sense early of what I wanted to do. I was almost obsessively driven to get there.'
After his early drawings of Fred Flintstone and Woody Woodpecker he began creating flipbooks with his own inventions. At the age of nine he had a weekly comic strip entitled Walter Crouton for the Kent Good Times Dispatch (Kent, Connecticut), his local newspaper. Even as a kid he managed to offend some Catholics by portraying a guy kneeling at the altar about to take communion and saying, "Can I have fries with that?"
He went on to study film and animation at Rhode Island School of Design and subsequently started working for the animation giants of yesteryear, Hanna-Barbera, the creators of The Flintstones among many others. 'Right up to the day each one of them died they were in the studio every day serving as an inspiration to everyone. I'm sure there were two sides to them. You can't become that successful without having a dark side, but I never saw it. They were incredibly kind. I used to walk into Will Barbera's office and it was like stepping back in time. The carpeting, the walls, everything had not been touched.'
Much of MacFarlane's work pays homage to the golden days of American movie making, its music and its television. One wonders if MacFarlane would have been comfortable being born a few decades earlier. He can't stand the idea of Facebook and most modern technology. 'In the fifties and sixties they pretty much had it together but I'd miss the medical advances.'
MacFarlane's favourite movie is The Sound Of Music. 'I've seen it about 75 times. It's top of my list. There's been a decline in the music industry over the past couple of decades. I like to hear music that asks something of me. Music that offers something more than a beat.'
That is why he is passionate about the songs on his album Music Is Better Than Words; old-fashioned songs sung in an old fashioned way. 'My parents exposed my sister and I to a lot of great old musicals. My father was a teacher, my mother was a secretary. They liked Sound Of Music, My Fair Lady, Brigadoon. I think it was good for the brain. I was far too young to have any nostalgic connections to that music, but the brilliance in the way it was presented gave me an emotional connection. It was American music truly reaching its zenith.
'It was, it was lush, it was complex yet very accessible. Hearing that spoiled any contemporary music that I would hear from then on. It could never measure up. It's like having sex with Angelina Jolie then going out with Rosie O'Donnell. What could you do?'
I tell him that idea is wrong on so many levels and he laughs a hollow little laugh. Rosie O'Donnell is gay, so I doubt she'd consider having sex with him. But he seems to think that doesn't spoil his joke.
When did he realise he could sing? 'I've been singing since I was a kid and my parents signed me up for a church choir, which was hilarious due to the fact that I'm the furthest thing from religious.' He did however attend a religious school because his father Ronald was a teacher there. He looks at his phone again. I order more coffee. His beverages remain untouched. There is something anxious about him despite all his smoothness.
I wonder if many people mistake him for Donny Osmond. 'It's my big goofy ridiculous grin. If you're an American citizen and you say you don't like Donny Osmond they send you to Guantanamo Bay.' Of course in so many ways he is the antithesis to the religious righteous non-drinking non-caffeine imbibing Mormon Donny. But weirdly they share a strong work ethic and a particular smile. And the fact that MacFarlane loves competence and tradition.
To make sure his voice is note and tone perfect he's worked for many years with Lee and Sally Sweetland, Barbra Streisand's vocal coaches. 'I trained with them for many years and still do from time to time. Lee passed away a year ago. They were married for 70 years. Sally is in her 90s. I believe she trained Frank Sinatra at some point. Their son Steve has taken over the business and I was able to train with him for the album to get myself in shape.'
In his Grammy nomination he was up against Streisand, Tony Bennett, Harry Connick Jr and Susan Boyle. He says, 'If all those four people had died in a car crash I might have won it.' This is the first time he indicates that there is something he can't win.
Also, the planned revamp of The Flintstones, set to arrive on our screens in 2013, has had to be put on a back burner because the studio, Fox, felt it wasn't anywhere near ready. I had also read that he was thinking of killing off Family Guy.
'That was made up by our wonderful friends in the entertainment media. It was a musing that statistically shows don't have their best years past season 7 and we are working on season 10. Perhaps its success is because it was slow in growing.'
When it was first aired in January 1999 it was not commissioned for a second season, but high DVD sales established a huge fan base and it was recommissioned in 2002. 'It needed time to grow. Seinfeld was by no means a hit at the beginning but they believed in it. In the past ten years there could have been hundreds of shows that could have become hits and they were just never given the chance to grow their audience. If you're not a hit in three weeks you're gone, which is a mistake and a function of a lack of vision amongst most TV executives.
'Historically Fox has allowed us to try things. At least this particular regime has been pretty progressive. It costs them money which speaks of their open mindedness.'
He did an episode featuring a teenage abortion, which was deemed too outrageous for conservative America, but it was released on the DVD. 'Fox spent the money to let us produce the episode and said we reserve the right not to air it if it's too sensitive.' He shrugs as if it didn't bother him. 'The trouble is America shuts its brain off to its own detriment and allows conservative politicians to in effect appropriate God and Jesus to brainwash people.
'The Bible is a worthy study, in the same way that Greek, Roman and Viking myth are worthy. The universe doesn't really care whether I believe or not. If you are an atheist who is 100 per cent sure there's no guiding force, that's just as bad as the Bible thumpers, all of whom are 100 per cent sure. Nobody knows, although there's more data pointing to the fact there's no guiding hand. Life is a series of distractions and there's no indication there's anything after death,' he says purposefully, matter of factly.
His mother Ann Perry MacFarlane died in July 2010. Does he ever feel her or feel that he could communicate with her? 'No. I was very close to my mother. I miss her but I don't believe she's watching over me. She had skin cancer and she didn't go to the doctor. She was not a practicing Christian Scientist but she'd grown up around people who were. A lot of members of her family were Christian Scientists and it didn't work out too well for them. She and two other women on her side of the family died of cancer because they didn't go to the doctor.'
She just wasn't in the habit of going to the doctor? 'Yeh,' he says. For the first time in our meeting he is looking me in the eye, giving me a sense that he is human, not animated.
'We tried. The doctors at Cedars Sinai brought her three months of additional life to their great credit and in that three months she was able to see the birth of her granddaughter, so it was very profound… These brave men and women of science working desperately to buy her some additional time and save her from the damage that had been done.
'My cousin discovered it. He saw a spot on her forehead and said that doesn't look great and we tried desperately to get her to go to the doctor and she wouldn't go. It began to spread and it got worse and worse and worse. Finally we were able to get her to go and I'm not sure whether it was at this point the disease had reached a level where it was impossible for her to deny it or whether we just hit on the right way.'
The cancer had spread; she had secondaries and was in real pain. He bows his head. Bares no teeth. Says, 'It was not good… it's all wrapped up in the fear of science, the fear of hospitals, fear of doctors. I remember trying to explain to her that medical science is the only weapon we have come up with as human beings that is in any way combating what nature throws at us, i.e. disease. It was hard to persuade her. She was stubborn for a long time.'
How did his mother's passing change him? 'I don't think it did,' he says with a look of perplexity, wondering if it should have. 'I occasionally go to a psychiatrist. Probably less often than I should. And I said to him I had a couple of months where I was just debilitated and now I'm oddly okay. And he said believe it or not that's a sign you had a good relationship with your mum. She was taken too young but at the same time you felt there was nothing that was unfinished or incomplete. And that's true. There's nothing I feel I should have said or done differently. Short of physically dragging her to the hospital I did everything I could do. This was a choice she made.'
I am not sure but I think I see a glistening in his eye. He says that his happy childhood did not prepare him for the needy women of Hollywood and at the moment he has no significant other.
'I live in Hollywood which makes it 100 times more difficult than anywhere else. I'm a traditional romantic but you deal with a lot of daddy issues in this town. There is a certain degree of psychological complexity that comes with this industry. If your parents weren't rock solid - I had great parents - and if you get along with both your parents and they treat you well you can navigate this industry.
'I have never had a desire or need to date a girl who was less than decent, respectful and kind. That's what I seek out. I have no patience for,' he searches for the word, 'weird, but you see a lot of that.
'You also see a need to be treated negatively. The industry breeds it. The job is constantly putting you in a position where you are standing in a room looking at another person and saying please say that I'm good enough and constantly being rejected and told you're not. There's no way that is not going to bleed over and have an impact on your personal life.
'There was an interesting article in the New York Times a little while back about exactly this issue in the Hollywood industry and they made a point that when you experience that to a certain degree you look for it in your personal life. When you meet someone who's actually good for you, you reject them because you think they must be a fraud. A very accurate analysis.
'So don't let anyone know that I'm a nice guy. The relationships that have worked out for me with girls, that have gone well, have consistently been with women who come from happy families.'
He has no time for negativity, neurosis, vulnerability, because he's never really experienced that. Does he have any insecurities? 'Yeh.' Fears? 'When Family Guy got cancelled and I was suddenly out of a job and faced the prospect of having to sell my house I was surprisingly less stressed than I thought I'd be. I just thought I'd done everything I could. And then it came back.'
As to finding a girlfriend he says that he might have to move to Boston. 'I was surprised how traditional and old fashioned the women were there. I have no physical type. They don't have to be full of laughs. Just self-assured in the right ways.'
Usually people who are funny get that way out of insecurity, but he's not like that at all. 'I have plenty of insecurities, I just don't let them run my life,' he says and looks at his phone again. You can feel him straining to want to leave, even after our bonding moments. He still hasn't touched his Coke or his coffee.
Does he ever relax? 'I play the piano. I have played for 17 years. I go horseback riding. I'll sit at home and watch movies and drink booze. Jack Daniels. On its own, a little ice.'
He smiles at the thought of Jack. 'I have consumed a lot of it. They sent me a deed for some little square of grass on the property it gets made. I guess that's what they do if you drink enough Jack. It says that I own one square foot of land on the distillery grounds.'
He looks at his phone for what must be the hundredth time, tells me that he must get back to his editing suite.

Jinky's Café is Shia LaBeouf's local pancakes and eggs place. It's low key, no fuss. That's what he likes. They know him well there.
He would eat a stack of pancakes seven times a day there when preparing to gain 45lbs to play the slightly buttery boy to man Jack Bondurant in Lawless. Now he's back to his lithe self, his bones jutting out. He's sitting outside pulling on a cigarette, wearing bashed up grey jeans which may well be the same jeans I saw him in a couple of years ago, but more ripped.
His T-shirt is so ripped it hangs like a tabard with the sides missing to reveal his taught frame and multiple tattoos.
His hair is unbrushed, brown, long, wavy. He is unshaven with a slight beard and eyes that glitter like Jesus's. Grey, green, yellow, multi-coloured eyes that at first look consistently away from me at the pancake menu, out at the car park, until eventually he can look at me direct.
He is a triple A-rated box office draw, only child of Shayna Saide and Jeffrey LaBeouf, who split up when he was six. He grew up in Echo Park, a rough Latin suburb of LA. They were dirt poor. He started acting at the age of 12 to support his mother when his druggie Vietnam Vet father left. He seems much older than his 26 years, and he almost delights in suffering. 'Through pain comes joy,' he says without irony.
'Just reading the titles of these pancakes gives me joy. Red velvet pancake, lemon curd and berry happy pancake. It's a Willy Wonka factory of pancakes.'
The reason he started acting was to make money. The young ruffian was an unlikely star of the long-running Disney TV series Evens Stevens.
Making money was his focus and make money he did. He was involved in Spielberg's Raiders of the Los Ark franchise, and he was the star of the Transformers trilogy, which grossed over $1.55 billion worldwide. By the age of 24 he was a multi-millionaire and he had been dubbed the movie world's number one money spinner.
It began to irk him that 'people don't point at me and say actor, they say box office.'
LaBeouf's name could raise the money to get many movies made, although not necessarily the ones he wanted. He began to crave a movie with texture and depth. Lawless director John Hillcoat recognised LaBeouf's feelings - he had been a prisoner of franchise movies.
They met just around the corner from where are not at Hamburger Hamlet. 'Hillcoat said I'd like to make Goodfellas in the woods and I liked that a whole lot. I read the book The Wettest Country In The World from which Lawless was adapted and then awaited the script which Nick Cave was writing.'
The movie they made was a life changing one for LaBeouf. Utterly brilliant from start to finish with incredible pace, it is graphic and emotionally taut, sophisticated and raw. It is about a relationship between two brothers of which LaBeouf plays the youngest set in the backdrop of the Depression, Prohibition, bootlegging, corruption, love and brutality.
For LaBeouf it will shatter all preconceptions. He has arrived as an actor - he grows up with his character and drives the movie. 'My whole heart was in it. I'm aware that it will change the way people see me, which is why it's such a big deal for me.'
After he saw Tom Hardy in Bronson he thought he would be perfect to play older brother the invincible Forrest, so he wrote him a handwritten letter. 'He was entering the Hollywood arena for the first time. He had no friends out here. (This was long before Batman). We became text buddies. Hard. I sent him the script, he loved it.'
At that point they could raise the money for the movie because 'you had the total package - the unproven actor (LaBeouf) who had box office success and Hardy when everything was going boom for him.' Characteristically LaBeouf is full of self-doubt and without any doubt at all.
'Two years ago the business perceived me as box office. After Wall Street it's what the fuck is this guy doing next?' He shrugs. It's a trying not to seem vulnerable shrug.
Lawless and LaBeouf needed each other. Both LaBeouf and his character come of age in the movie. He starts as a clumsy naïve boy who can't bear to watch a pig being slaughtered and then learns how sensitivity is hindering his criminal career. He drinks his first moonshine, has his first kiss, seduces Mia Wasikowska's Bertha who comes from a strict religious sect and together they shed his vulnerability and rebel.
LaBeouf physically transformed himself. He became heavy with an extreme haircut, a slow and awkward gait - the complete opposite to the man before me now who is so alive, lithe, fidgety yet confident in his own skin.
He urges me to try the Red Velvet pancakes and then tells me pancakes were mostly responsible for his weight gain. 'My weight is around 130-140lbs. I shipped for Lawless at 185lbs. I completely changed my life.
'I sat here eating pancakes every day, seven times a day. I would sleep five hours and set my alarm, wake up, chug down a protein shake, fall back to sleep.'
Still lumpy from Lawless he went to meet Robert Redford who was to direct him in The Company You Keep where he plays a reporter who is normal sized. 'When I first showed up for Redford he said, "You look like a gorilla. You have to lose all the weight".
'As a director he's one of the greatest dudes I've ever sat down with. It was magic. He gave me a lot of trust. I didn't experience much of trust from legends before that. There was a lot of micro-management. With him there was, "I know you are going to do right by me." He's not a sweetheart coach. There's a distance but he fills that distance with love and he's lobbing it at you the whole time.
He orders scrambled eggs, loose. Chicken sausage and a pancake. He is equally at home with excess or starvation. He likes extremes. 'I don't like the warm and I don't like the grey. I like hot or cold, black or white.'
He's wearing grey jeans. Is he trying to attract a balance of greyness? 'Er, I don't know what that's about. I don't really give a shit what I wear. Maybe you go to a press junket or your publicist will get you a few days of clothes for the junket and they'll just last forever. I've had a box of these pants for a while. It's expelled shopping from my life. I hate shopping because a shopper is a person who is in the warm and the grey, who is looking for something and analysing. There's a difference between that and a person who walks into a store and knows what they want and grabs it. It's goal orientated.'
He's not interested in things. 'No, not at all. I'm forcibly anti-materialism. I remember Josh Brolin in Wall Street gave me a hard time about this specific thing. He would say to me, "You think you're real because your shoes are scuffed." We had lots of arguments. Blowouts.
'I do prefer my shoes scuffed. It's definitely rebellion against
having so much money. And also I like texture. I don't dislike stains or rips. This is my parents' aesthetics bestowed upon me. But the future is all about taking trash and building a castle. That's the future.'
His relationship with money is a conundrum. When he worked on Oliver Stone's Wall Street 2 he started to do some trading to get into his character. Obsessively. He had cocktail nights with George Soros because he wanted to learn. He was much better at it than his character and made a chunk of money. It was all about being competitive with Brolin.
'Yes, that's why I did it. Not because of the money. It was about proving to him that I was a better trader. It was how big is your cock? I wanted to look at him and think he was an actor. I wanted to have him think that all day every time I was on my phone I was shifting money.'
Probably drove him mad. 'Probably, but in the end we liked each other.'
LaBeouf has always been in tune with men who are a paradox. He specialises in conflicted relationships with father figures. No doubt because of the impact of his relationship with his own father, who was largely absent but sometimes intensely present, and LaBeouf had to stand by him as he battled his demons.
Oliver Stone is another man with whom he had an extreme relationship. 'With Oliver it's "this is the script, this is the monitor". It makes it difficult to have a connection with a man when he is that bureaucratic. He's a genius writer and I love him too.'
Stone has a very intense relationship with marijuana and his father was an addict and a grower for much of his life. When I point out that maybe Stone was his dad he nods with a wry smile. 'Yes, there's that.' Long pause. 'I rarely get into fights with directors. My director is my god, my rock, my mother, my father, my lover, my brother, my enemy. There was a bit of rebellion with Oliver. 90 per cent friendship, 10 per cent something else.
'Some people have had liquor around them their whole lives. I've had marijuana around me my whole life. I am a child of the eighties. It was like the passing of the guard.'
LaBeouf's relationship with alcohol is a frightening one. 'I go for long periods of complete sobriety and I never drink for the taste. I drink with the specific reason I'm going to get bombed tonight. And a lot of people think this way. It's the same thing that happens in the army or a dorm. I'm a fallible human being and there are points when after a three month shoot you look at your co-star and say "Tonight's the night my man. Let's let our hair down." And when I let my hair down I really let it down. All the way to the jail cell usually.'
He's not joking. He's been in fights and altercations and public bar room brawls. 'Yeh, I shouldn't let my hair down in public. You live and you learn. But I am no genius and it takes a genius to learn from other people's mistakes.'
He's an unusual cocktail, easily triggered but hugely tender. Although he's a huge fan of the handwritten letter beseeching someone he admires to work with him he says it doesn't work with love letters.
'Love on paper is bullshit. Love for me is in the silences. It's looking out of my left eye for that ten seconds longer and seeing how we feel. Whatever that feeling is that's love. It doesn't have to be a word thing. I'm talking about the kind of love that is beyond unconditional, something that is still sexy, that is beyond mother, beyond father.'
Is his love for his father unconditional? Certainly he felt abandoned as a child and as a young adult when his father was unavailable to him because he was hooked on drugs and depravity. 'Yes, yes. I would say through the pain he has given me more than my mother, and he wasn't even there. There was a long period of time when it wasn't the sound of my mother's voice on the phone that brought me to tears, it was my father. At point that was more successful to me than being happy. I'm grateful for my pains, is all. If you don't have any pain you'd better get busy. Life without pain isn't real at all.'
What is his current pain? 'I worry about money - what it does to people around me rather than what it does to me. It changes life and it makes you less trusting of people. People's agendas become more fickle. I'm good with or without money but it's more comfortable with money. I just put a lot of money into buying land. That's half preparing for a movie and half trying to change my lifestyle by building a communal farm.
'In my early days (I was 18) I ended up spending $50,000 on Dodgers tickets, which was crazy. That was several seasons of season tickets, which was my biggest expenditure other than houses for my family.
'With the money I made from trading I bought land up the central coast of California. I'm gong to build an aquaponics farm. You have aquaculture, which is the study of fish, and then you have hydroponics which is the study of plants without soil. Aquaponics is building a sustainable system to breed both fish and plants in the same system.
'I will live there myself and my girl will come and visit on weekends when she can get out of work and that will be my life. She is a fashion designer.'
On Wall Street he met and fell in love with British actress Carey Mulligan. 'Actresses, that's a tough one to pull. It's like bowling with a turkey. It's nice to have a person with different passions and loves. It opens things up. Like LA is not less interesting but it has a less diverse culture than somewhere like Chicago where people have other interests. Everybody is after the same export here which is to be involved in this game. Everybody is talking about the same thing.'
Did he learn this from Mulligan? 'No, because Carey is not just an actress, she is a great human being, a sweet girl and super intelligent. Our thing came down to not having copacetic work/lifestyles. We were always travelling and also sensibility differences that weren't conducive to living with one another. I am harder on myself and my surroundings than she is and we had a bit of a culture shock in terms of meeting her parents and vice versa. Sensibilities, cultures, histories. There were differences, that's all.
'She's happy as hell right now and we wouldn't have been able to make it like that. She was chasing marriage, family, kids more than I was. I'm not opposed to marriage, I just think I'm quite young. I come from divorce. I'm only doing marriage once. It's not a game for me. I'm not a religious person but I have ethics.'
When you Google LaBeouf the first image that appears is one of him completely naked in a music video for Icelandic band Sigur Ros for an instrumental track called Fjogur Piano. 'I was offered an opportunity to be part of this experiment. Ten film makers picked a song from Sigur Ros's album and made an experimental film.' His was made by director Alma Har'el (Bombay Beach). The erotic video was supposed to portray a man and woman locked in a never-ending cycle of addiction and desire.
'It was coinciding with me prepping for playing a drug addict Charlie in Bucharest, so internally it worked for me. We are waking up having full blown drug riddled romance all night long. It doesn't feel right to have drug riddled sex with clothes on.
'There is a lot of nudity in Charlie so the Sigur Ros thing was an experiment with my comfort zone to see how I would feel in front of Evan Rachel Wood. Charlie is going to be wild, beyond X-rated. A depressed man looking for happiness which takes him to a lot of crazy places.'
How closely did he relate to the character? 'One thousand million per cent. I am a cynic who stays in the creative to avert myself from being truly dark. I am too proud to embrace happiness and joy. I receive immense joy from my work but I'm too proud to truly thrive on it.'
He doesn't look up to men who are openly vulnerable. 'It's the reason I love Jake LaMotta. He doesn't want to see anyone to see how vulnerable he is. When you see a man holding it in and he doesn't want you to see it, that's when it hurts.
'The people I look up to, they like dirty shoes. They don't try. You could either look up to Paul Newman or Steve McQueen. I love McQueen. I have all of Steve McQueen's guns. I got them from his wife. I told you, I write these letters. Anyway his wife wrote me back. We made a deal. In return I gave a couple of things - money, and spent time with her kids who are fans.'
He stops for another cigarette. The paw tattoo on his upper arm is for his dog Rex. 'I'm an only child so my best friend was my dog and my dog died and it also coincided with the loss of my virginity when I was 18.' The numbers around his wrist '1986-2004' symbolise the end of childhood. On the front side of his torso is an intricate drawing of a fish with a shark fin. 'Tom Hardy had a tattoo artist who was on tour with us basically. I have always looked at myself as a goldfish with a shark fin attached to his back in a fish tank so everyone could see.' On his other side there is an Escher painting.
He has chickens. In his childhood, when he was five, his father had a circus act involving chickens jumping through hoops. 'I don't know how my dad trained them. My chickens are healthy of mind and they run from me like chickens are supposed to. He had a wild connection with a chicken that I can't quite maintain.'
His mum still lives in LA although in a much better area. His dad is also local. 'My dad is happy as hell. Sober as hell. They've got a great AA system here in the Valley. My dad has many partners. He's a very suave man. He's a painter. He'll always be that guy.
'My mum has never had another partner since my father. She's just starting to talk about it. She fell in love with her son and lost track of herself for a long time, and that happens to a lot of mothers. She's just now starting to get herself back, which I'm happy about. There was a big portion of time where I wasn't willing to have any man around my mother either because I am protective and abandoned.
'Also she lived in a very Latin neighbourhood and the way Latin men deal with women is loud, and I didn't like that, especially as my mother is a voluptuous woman and a saleswoman, so she would dress the part, and that entailed a lot of hooting and hollering and things that I do not appreciate. 'Being a single mother and even slightly attractive in an environment which is extraordinarily machismo driven is hard.'
He talks unstoppably, urgently. That aloneness created in him a huge need for self-expression. 'Especially if you're stuck in a movie for too long, you can get real dark.' He says his next movie is 'very dark'. 'The guy that I'm playing is isolated, a fire watcher. That's why I want to ship out to the woods and get really alone.' Isn't that masochistic? 'No. In prepping for the movie I know I am making progress which is keeping me in the light.
'Ultimately the process will give me joy. It may not be the kind of joy that comes from a party at Shaky's Pizza with some confetti but joy is different for different people. And for me it's not 50 dudes in my back yard having a barbecue and watching football. For me sometimes I may be alone in that darkness, even if it's 20 seconds before I go to sleep. If I can think you put in good work today, that's all the joy I'm after.
'When I did Lawless there was almost no aloneness and it caused friction. You get into personality conflicts, like why are you around me, I'm doing my laundry? That happens even between lovers. It happened between me and Hardy. We're passionate people. love has many shades. You could say I love you when you are going at it and screaming. It was very brotherly in every way.'
Is it hard on his girlfriend? 'Extraordinarily difficult. Thank God she has her own passions or it would never work. It's really hard. Where there's a will there's a way. It depends on your love. It depends how willing most people are to compromise for that love. She gives me my time. She gives me three weeks to get on the train. And once I know where we're going and I can feel the wind she's allowed to come on set. Nobody comes on set when I am trying to get the ship out of the harbour. And even then I hate visitors. It takes me out of the dream.'
LaBeouf wants to be both in that dream and out of it equally badly. I leave him a solitary figure smoking dreamily under the sign Jinky's. Better Than Breakfast In Bed.

David Harewood is nothing like his character David Estes, the CIA chief in Homeland who is very proper, stiff, by the book. In person the MBE awarded actor is much softer and sensitive.
He is a man whose been in therapy in his younger years following a breakdown because he felt too much pressure to be the perfect black actor. But his life has turned around with his part in the Golden Globe award winning series.
It is unmissable and coincidentally President Obama's favourite television programme. 'Yes, he really enjoys it. He sneaks off when Michelle and the kids are busy to his room in the White House. It's great to know it's not far from the truth of what could potentially happen.'
The show is based around super smart personality disordered CIA operative Claire Danes on her mission to discover if Damian Lewis's character Brody is the brave American sergeant he purports to be or has he been turned after years of captivity in Iraq.
There are many twists and turns and it's compulsive viewing. Harewood plays the CIA boss who must remain measured and neutral at all times.
Did he know it was going to be as ground breaking as it turned out? 'I read the script and I've read many scripts of pilots over the years and you're used to the formulaic nature of handsome guy meets handsome girl but he's a bit of a maverick but comes good in the end. And this was not at all like that.
'First of all there's a female protagonist, and it was very different. I love the way it was written. I love the serious nature of the plot. And the personal dynamics.'
Did the writers have CIA experience? 'They had the nuts and bolts of an idea and they were in a conference in LA and happened to be sitting next to a real CIA operative. They got talking. She was a catalyst, a piece in the jigsaw. She was around at the pilot for a couple of weeks. A very interesting woman in her forties, very attractive. She joined when she was 18. I think the character of Carrie has been an amalgamation of many different things drawn in part from her experience.
'It also looks at where are we ten years after 9/11. Is America safer?'
His character did not come naturally to him at all. 'I had to work really hard to find the right voice. I don't do this accent for any other black American actor I play. It's very Ivy League, very buttoned down, conservative. It took me a while to find a role model for them because you are used to hearing black characters talk a little bit more southern or a little bit more New York, that kind of vernacular.'
He doesn't know what's happening to his character. The writers keep everything very secret. He has to play him very much in the present.
'None of us know how it's going to end until we get a script three or four days before the end of the episode we are shooting. You get a ping on your iPad and you sit down and devour it. It's very exciting. We all want to know what is happening next.'
He can't prepare for any of his character's actions, so it's a different kind of acting. 'You have to be very present because you just don't know where things are going. The turnaround is very quick, but I find that very exciting, although stressful as well.
'We just found out that one of the characters with us in the first series got shot. None of us saw that coming. I can't tell you who. Anyone could go at any minute.'
He feels that even his character isn't safe and at 46 Harewood had reached a crossroads in his career where he was probably looking forward to safety.
He caused small ripples when he appeared on screen as Friar Tuck in 2006 in BBC1's Robin Hood and was applauded for his portrayal of Nelson Mandela in the 2010 BBC4 drama Mrs Mandela. We saw him pose provocatively for the BBC2's Babyfather in 2001 and he was lead bad guy opposite Leonard di Caprio in the 2006 blockbuster Blood Diamond.
He first came into consciousness when he played Anthony opposite Vanessa Redgrave's Cleopatra. The two became great friends and he moved in with her, although it was not a sexual relationship. It was one that inspired him to think about issues, books and politics. He was also the first black British actor to play Othello at the National Theatre.
He said recently that he thought it was difficult for black actors in Britain. In the Seventies 'we were the criminals and the muggers. And suddenly in the Eighties you couldn't do that any more. We became the doctors and the nice guys who'd done well. Boring.'
He pointed up the need for more complex less stereotypical roles and that black actors might be likely to find roles in America, but then retracted. 'It sounds like I'm Brit bashing,' which he likes to point out he is not.
Today he is not even going so far as to say that the US is more open to black talent. 'Does he think Britain is improving as far as creating better chances for black actors? 'It's hard to say. I feel it is getting better. Lennie James has done a fantastic job (playing the lead as DCI Tony Gates in BBC2's Line Of Duty) so it can be done.
'Last year I did a couple of jobs. A movie called The Man Inside. Nothing really worked for me in the off-season in England. I work on Homeland six months a year.
'I think I was just unlucky there wasn't anything around for me. I'm hoping that will not be the case for my next break although I'm equally prepared to spend six months twiddling my thumbs if that's how it falls.'
The very relaxed persona that is in front of me now has taken some work to get there. When he got his first big break just after leaving RADA in 1989 he played a bisexual murderer on stage at the Derby Playhouse, the lead part in Joe Orton's Entertaining Mr Sloane. The performance caused some sections of the audience to walk out and he was criticised by the black community for setting a bad example.
Harewood took this very seriously. He said at the time, 'It's like having a gun to your head. There was a huge pressure of being the ultimate black man. I started turning up to the stage drunk.'
After that he would have episodes where he would completely forget what was going on, how he got there, who he was, and ended up in a psychiatric ward and then had to retreat to his parents' house in Birmingham for a few months.
Therapy saved him, although he still found relationships with women complicated and destructive. After seven years of therapy he had a grip on himself and in 2002 met his now wife Kirsty. Their daughter Maize was born a year later, followed by Raven in 2006, and in 2007 they married.
'My family are here with me now (in Charlotte, North Carolina, where Homeland is filmed) but they are based in London. They come out for the summer holidays. I work between one and four days before I get a break but the rest of time it's like being on holiday. We've got a pool here and they swim every day and they've been down to Charleston sightseeing.'
Maize (pronounced Maisie) is 9, and Raven, 6. 'Maize wants to see the statue of Liberty. I'm amazed that she even knows what it is. It seems like just a couple of years ago she was a beautiful thing in my arms. We were looking for a name for a child and I went to see the movie Ray. I said to my wife if it's a boy how about Ray. She said no way. So we ended up with Raven, and of course we call her Ray.'
Harewood is very keen never to complain or moan. But in a quiet voice says, 'I am on my own for about four months. Back in the day when I was a bit younger perhaps you would have a bit of fun with that because it can get lonely.
'Charlotte is a nice place but I'm used to an urban metropolis like London or New York. I don't enjoy the laid back nature of Charlotte. I suppose you have to take your foot off the gas and chill a bit but it's not in my DNA and I struggle. I'm in a great show and so many of us are not even working, so I am grateful.'
He once said, 'I'm sick of playing it straight. I want to jump in and out of bed and snog gorgeous women.' He laughs in shock when I remind him he said that. 'I have no idea where that came from, really. Although I definitely have a desire to snog gorgeous women but I have to make sure it's all above board and my wife didn't mind, so it would be only in acting, not in reality.'
He is charismatic, tall, and emotionally articulate. You get the sense that he's really a good person and a kind one, even to strangers. He has even donated bone marrow. 'I joined a charitable trust for bone marrow and stem cells. The charity tries to encourage black and ethnic minorities to join the bone marrow register because there are so many ethnic minorities waiting for matches. If you are white there is a 1 in 100 chance of finding a bone marrow match. If you are black it's 1 in 1,000. It's difficult because of how our blood as over many years been diluted and mixed.
'So I joined the register. I'd been on for about a year when somebody told me there was a match. So I donated marrow. It wasn't painful. It was uncomfortable but there was a chance of saving a life. In fact it only gave them another couple of years of life. All I know is it was a young child and it didn't work out. It's important to raise awareness. Sometimes it's just about being hooked up to a machine like you would give blood. I would definitely do it again.'
He also likes to help out in schools. 'I just did a silly acting class with the kids - Shakespearean Insults - they were very excited about it. There was one kid who wasn't particularly bright but he was fantastic in acting class and I think that's really exciting, to give people the chance to shine and I'd like to do more of that.'
He identifies with this boy because Harewood himself was not a great academic at school. 'I was a bit of a naughty boy at school. I was sporty on the school football and basketball team. That was the only reason I wasn't thrown out and I was good in the school play and I always liked playing games. I was very lucky.
'I'm the only actor in my family. My brother is a manager in a car plant, the other brother is a lorry driver and my sister works for the council.' His father, now retired, was also a lorry driver.
'How I got to RADA it was a miracle. There were a few times in my life where fate has stepped in and intervened. RADA was one of them. I cancelled my RADA audition because I got into another drama school but the letter never arrived. On the day I was supposed to go to the audition they phoned me and said why haven't your turned up. I surmised they hadn't got the letter so I told them a pack of lies that I was ill so they gave me another shot. So I went there carefree because I thought I've got nothing to lose because I'm going to drama school anyway. So I got in and never looked back.'
There is an unexpected spiritual side to Harewood, or at least one that believes in divine serendipity. He feels that getting Homeland itself was due to a divine intervention. He's choked as he tells me, 'My best mate Louis, who I miss terribly, I'd known him since I was eight, died in 2009 out of the blue. A routine operation on his knee went wrong and they killed him. He was the life and soul of the party and a cartilage removal operation ended his life.
'I was completely smashed by it. I'd never been so broken. It was a terrible shock. It destroyed me and a lot of my faith and my confidence. I didn't work for a year. I didn't know what to do so I took a year out. I couldn't work, I wasn't making any money, I was broke. Nothing made sense. I felt the crushing of reality, it slapped me across the face. I just couldn't do it, I couldn't act any more. I was really worried. I didn't know what I was going to do instead.
'I started to do a few auditions and I did a show at the National to get myself back in, but I felt very vulnerable on stage. It was the first time I'd been on stage since he died.
'They sent me Homeland. I stuck it on the table. I didn't think anything of it. Then about three months later my manager rang me up and said they are interested in you for Homeland. And then I looked at Homeland and I realised, yes, yes, I do want this.
'The producers rang me and suddenly it seemed to be getting closer. Then one day, it was a Saturday morning, I got an email from my manager saying congratulations, you've got it. I looked at my missus and she said, "You know what day it is. It's Lou's birthday."
'He always used to say the one job I always wanted I was going to get. Whenever I got down he'd say "You're going to make it, you're going to make it." So this happened on his birthday. It felt like a…' He's lost for words, choked up. 'I can't even go there. I like to think it was him. He wasn't an actor. He was just a regular guy but we laughed every day.
'Last year was crazy, getting this and then getting the MBE. I still shake my head when I see those letters after my name. I'm very proud of it. I hope I can keep on doing good work and make him proud.'
He composes himself and tries to think what brings him happiness - his wife Kirsty, his kids - 'I'm wondering what show I'm going to take them to in New York. Two years ago I was thinking how am I going to pay the mortgage, so I'm very glad and very grateful.'

* Homeland: Season 1 is released on Blu-Ray and DVD on September 10. Homeland: Season 2 will air on Channel 4 in October.

'I work at a special needs school, only two seconds down the road, so I was able to come home at lunch-time to help break it up. Then I thought of taking him to school to help with therapy for the children.
'Some of them have cerebral palsy and have quite severe muscle spasm and can't relax their hands. They will be clenched at all times. Just to be able to put their hands on a dog and then you see their hand relax when they touch the dog is very rewarding.
'I also have an English bull terrier called Roxy who I dressed up as the reindeer for Christmas for the school. Frank likes to dress up as well. They were a bride and groom and Frank was the bride. He also loves doggy agility.'
Did he have any other anxieties when she first got Frank? 'Well he did destroy the house. But I was determined that I wasn't going to give up on him. The first year every time I came home I would find he had shredded his bed all over the hallway, foam everywhere. He also ate some of my door frame and if he got into the bathroom he would shred everything that he could find including soap displays and Christmas presents. We would walk in and it would be like a soap storm.
'But now he's got over his separation anxiety. If he sees me walking away he'll have a whinge but he's okay. If I get the cases out to go on holiday he would panic and sit in the suitcase.
'I rescued Roxy a year after Frank. She had been dumped because she had mange. She had no fur and her skin just bled. Her previous owners took her to the vet and asked for her to be put to sleep because people kept staring at her. She was a year old and now she's six. Frank is seven and I am 34.
'Because I work at a school we get a lot of holidays and we try and go on different excursions. Whenever I can I do fancy dress competitions so they look fun and cute and try to get the bad stigma away from the breed. Frank was recently a cowboy and Roxy was in a horse costume with a mane, tail and western saddle. We've also done Darth Vader and Princess Leia with Frank carrying on his cross-dressing theme.
'Frank is very laid back. Not a bad bone in his body. He has been attacked by a collie dog, but I have told him to lie down. I don't want him to retaliate. They are fantastic loyal dogs who will always bring a smile to your face.'
Ali Taylor is also proud of her Staffy's loyalty and complete turnaround. 'My Staffy comes out with me and does obedience and agility. I'm trying to get people to be more responsible with the breed and show what they can do. She is extremely friendly. I also have Betty who is a hand raised Chihuahua who I've had since she was a week old. Her mother died and that's why she came in. All the litter survived and were rehomed.
'My other Chihuahua is Nancy, she is long-coated. She came in a really bad state with her mother and brother. They had psychotic mange. She had no fur at all and was the size of a mobile phone so she wore a baby sock. We have taught her to herd sheep to dispel myths about the breed. I'm not sure she will win One Man And His Dog but she's a nice little herder.
'Her mum made it but her brother didn't. He started fitting when he was three weeks old and having convulsions, so we had to let him go.'
Of course not all the dogs that are brought in are desperately ill. Some of them just desperately misunderstood, or not given enough time.
'Squirt was brought in by her owners who said she was not house trained and was destructive. She wasn't meant to be good with other dogs. In fact she is brilliant with other dogs, she just didn't like kennels. She is a perfect dog.'
Squirt was only nine months when Ali took her in and she suspects her previous owners had not had the time to house train her and left her alone too long. She is a black brindle with big all feeling eyes and she is at Ali's side as we speak doting on her every move.
The average time a dog spends in Battersea waiting to be rehomed is 45 days. There are three centres with 300 staff across them. For The Love Of Dogs concentrates on the Battersea site.
'At the moment we have a lot of brindle coloured dogs so they probably stay longer because other dogs stand out more. Likewise black cats. We did a test some time ago and darkened a black cat's pen and put a sparkly collar on her so people would come up but they couldn't really see so they stayed longer and actually engaged with the cat. For some people finding a pet is like instant chemistry. There is an instant connection there. perhaps because it's got sad eyes or it's put its paw out, somehow it's touched you.
'That said I've kept a few dogs just because they were so naughty. One was a Chihuahua called Pippin. Every time I went to pick him up he'd show his teeth, literally biting the hand that feeds him. When he died i threw his ashes out at sea and they all blew back at me and I swallowed half of them. He always got the last word.
'There was another Doberman who had gone through a really big ordeal. Her name was Wilma. Dogs are a little bit like people, some are strong enough to come to terms with things and adapt and others can't get over it. Wilma was petrified. I tried for months and months. She had been sexually abused. She had a hole in her stomach and her back legs weren't really working. I fostered her and I couldn't let her go after everything she'd been through.
'I've heard every story, I've seen it. But with her she had that look of fear and worry all the time. A year down the line my dad took her on holiday. We were in Whitstable. A bird flew out of the grass and she ran off over the cliff. She didn't die but my dad went after her, fell and broke his shoulder and Wilma was sitting beside him. I was very sorry the day she died because life had been so unfair to her.
'I've fostered in the region of 400 dogs. I'm good at letting them go, but sometimes you just can't. We get a number of reasons for why people give things up: they can't afford it, they can't cope with it, they are allergic. Some things make you very upset. For instance when someone is terminally ill and they love their dog to pieces but they know they've got to let them go. They are in tears, the animal doesn't understand what is going on, we are crying. Those ones always get to me.'
Often a dog comes in because it's had too much attention of the wrong kind, and then it becomes unmanageable because it has been given a sense of self-entitlement.
'Chihuahuas come in because they are naughty and have probably been spoilt. They are cute and people treat them more like kids. They are encouraged to jump on your lap and before you know it you've promoted it to being queen. And then they can't be controlled and they end up in Battersea.
'We've recently had an epidemic of handbag dogs. They are very under socialised because they've never walked on a lead, they've been carried everywhere. One came in with its own suitcase of clothes and I just thought you won't actually need that dress in kennels. She brought in this doted on Chihuahua because it just kept biting her. It had its own travel bag and everything.
'You need to treat a dog as a dog, not as a human. Doting on a dog can do as much damage as neglecting it. Sometimes people over feed their dogs and the dog is obese and they are actually killing it. In society in general we need to get back to the basics, kids should be kids and dogs should be dogs.'
Paul O'Grady's documentary often focuses on the funny and the heart warming. It starts off with him in a dog bed begging the Battersea staff not to let him leave with a dog. He's a well-known lover of dogs and already has three rescue dogs. We see him meet Ali Taylor and he helps train some of the dogs to perform at Crufts. He assists vets during surgical procedures, including helping some pups be born by Caesarean section. He also scrubs the floor. The idea is to inject humour.
The darker side is not O'Grady's territory, and the type of atrocities that Ali Taylor talks about are not included. Nonetheless it does show a dog called Sparkle, a brindle mongrel, brought in who had been put inside a suitcase and dumped in a park. Sparkle was emaciated, dangerously so. The Battersea vet put her on a drip to try to bring her back to health. He didn't rate her chances but fortunately Sparkle lives, gains weight and becomes a playful with beseeching eyes. A couple fall in love with her and take her home.
'But not all dogs are that lucky,' says Ali. 'In my time here I've seen cruelty. I've seen the bizarre and the whacky. A dog that has been slashed repeatedly with a Stanley knife and a dog with a suitcase of clothes. If a dog is slashed with a knife the punishment is a slap on the wrists. We do more regarding damage to our car. If you park where you haven't got a permit a law is enforced and money is made. If your dog poos on the road no one bothers about it, and you have to look at these small things otherwise if you ignore these things the problems get bigger.
There are lots of Chihuahuas at the moment because there are photos in magazines of celebrities with small dogs. 'When 101 Dalmatians came out we saw an increase in Dalmatians. When The Only Way Is Essex came out - Chihuahua. People don't understand the breed. Also Chihuahua live for a long time, up to 20 years.'
Paul O'Grady took a particular liking to a white boxer with a black patch called Carmine, who has happily been rehomed and named Elvis.
Elvis had been at Battersea twice. He was with a family with three children and he got bigger than they expected. He was rehomed for a month but got very anxious so the family brought him back.
Roy Piggott, remembers when he first saw him in the kennels. 'he had his chest puffed out and wouldn't move an inch. His face was up against the bars. He had a lot of expression in his face. 'When we were introduced to him he was full of joy and licked my face.'
Roy had grown up with dogs but his partner Jess has never had a dog before. 'He is anxious when we leave the house. He is not destructive. He won't eat his food if he's left alone, but he's coming on leaps and bounds.
'We have flexible work schedules so we are trying to spend the least amount of time away from home. He can spend a couple of hours by himself, but then we like to come home at lunch-time to let him know we haven't left him. As there are no full days of him being alone we are reducing his stress.
'We put video cameras in the house to see what he does. He's not very destructive, even though boxers are known for chewing things. He does knock things off the table and whines.'
They took advice from Ali to ignore him the first ten minutes they got home to make him feel that it's normal, not a big event.
'He loves balls and one on one cuddles. He loves long walks but he's not a big swimming fan. We found that out when he jumped in a canal and jumped straight out.
'He is a lovely dog. We keep wracking our brains for how anyone could have given him away. We are very lucky.'
They say that looking at him in the kennel wasn't enough to make a judgement. 'As soon as we got the opportunity to take him into the meeting room and play we knew he was a great dog. I've never known a dog cuddle so much. He's not allowed on the bed but he'll wake you up by nuzzling his nose under the blankets.'
The series does show what an amazing organisation Battersea Dogs and Cats Homes is, but it is relatively under staffed and relies largely on people's good hearts and goodwill.
'We have many volunteers that help us. Without them it would not be possible. If a dog is not settling well we might do a kennel enrichment session, which means we might lavender scent the kennel or use a different type of oil that might help. We also give the dogs a massage and use the Tellington Touch (a system of acupressure made famous by Sarah Fisher). We also might put them in a thunder shirt, devised for dogs who are fearful of thunderstorms.
'We also look at the way we feed the dogs. We might put it in a food puzzle where they have to work out how to get it so they are using their brain a bit more.
'There about 500 dogs across the three sites at the moment. We can predict that around November we get dogs who have been spooked by fireworks and have bolted as a result. We get more shy dogs around that time.
'When the kids go back from holiday we get an increase of destructive behaviour dogs - they have been with someone all day for six weeks and suddenly they are left again and they are being ignored, so their destructiveness goes up. In February we get dogs that people have got for Christmas and they haven't managed to house train them, so they bring them to us. More and more often you get happy results.'
Marcel who was in one of the programmes is another Staffy who gets adopted, even though he is eight years old. Some people like senior dogs. 'I must admit anything with a grey face and my heart goes boomp. If a dog has three legs or an eye missing they are always the first to go because people feel sorry for them and they want to rescue them. Everybody cried when Marcel got adopted because he'd been around for so long, but they are good tears. It's emotional because we all got to know Marcel but it's a happy ending and happy tears.' Prepare to shed them.

* Paul O'Grady: For The Love Of Dogs, starts ITV1, Monday, September 3 at 8pm.


NB Please do google Nancy the sheepherding Chihuahua. Very funny.

I am inside the library of MOCA in downtown LA. Outside we hear the haunting vocals of Katy Perry telling us '…let's go all the way'. She is rehearsing for a charity performance at a huge gala. The day before she was in London for one of the first screenings of her documentary film Part Of Me.
She walks in purposefully, a tiny powerhouse who dismisses her giant security guard. She is in track bottoms and hoody, beige with peacock motif and cream scoop necked T-shirt. Her face make-up free except for a very pale base. Her newly purple hair pushed back into a ponytail. Most of the time the under her hoody. Her eyes look rather large and owlish behind glasses. There's not even a trace of sleeplessness, jet lag; only focus.
Her wit is quick and her mind is sharp. You are swept up in her enormous drive. It seems like she is taking everything in her stride and that everything is within her dainty manicured grasp. But as the documentary Part Of Me shows, there are many parts of Katy Perry.
The super hard worker whose work ethic is beyond most pop stars or indeed women of her age - 27. An ambitious visionary who is kind to her fans and loyal to her friends, and a vulnerable woman who is not afraid to cry and be filmed without make-up.
The movie was filmed over the course of a year. A year which saw Perry achieve phenomenal success and endure tremendous personal heartbreak. She has filmed all of it.
We see her Pentecostal Christian past with her father the preacher. We see her strumming her guitar when she was 15 with hardcore lyrics about Jesus. We see how her first record company tried to mould her to be the next Avril Lavigne, the next Kelly Clarkson, when all she wanted to be was not the next but the first Katy. We saw how she always wanted to speak to a worldwide audience, to people who didn't necessarily fit in.
'My audience don't necessarily want to go with the trends. They want to feel like they can be themselves and they don't need any kind of accessory to make them them. It was really important for me to keep some of the more unflattering shots in the film to show at the end of the day I'm just every kind of woman. A normal girl with a big dream who really worked hard to achieve it. You don't have to be born into something or be born with something. You don't have to have a material possession or a label. A lot of times peoples perceptions on people like me is that we are perfect from the moment we walk out the door and I wanted to show that is not the case.' And indeed she does.
We see her making sure she has relationship days. that may mean flying from Birmingham to LA to spend 36 hours with her then husband Russell Brand. We see her valiant juggling. We see the relationship disintegrate. We see her curled up, wrapped only in tears, unable to move. Your heart lurches as you see her wrenched on to the stage.
We see the moment where she makes recording history being the only woman to have five Number 1s from one album ( Teenage Dream) I was there with her in Nottingham when that news broke. Her team had asked to film the interview I was doing but I said no. if I'd known the resulting documentary would be so rivetingly good I would have been proud to be part of it.
'I remember you didn't want to be on camera but I didn't know it was going to be this mega deal with a big Hollywood studio (Paramount) and in 3D.' The film was made by two British boys from London Fields, Hackney, who filmed her every move for a year. 'We had over 300 hours of footage. I sold it to Paramount in the spring and it started coming along like a massive train.'
Katy Perry remembers pretty much everything - words, phrases, details stick with her. She is not afraid to show us who she is and my suspicion is that the movie will be huge because it is in no way self-congratulatory. We meet her grandmother, sister, brother, parents, fans. We see her run ragged. We see the life drained out of her. And then we see her in a dress with rotating breasts. The lasting impression of this movie, which could have been the ultimate in cartoon gloss, is that it's raw and it's real. And that's why people will connect to it.
Was she not afraid to show the heartbreak? The face with no make-up? 'I was in the edit suite saying this is okay. I think my peers might be scared of that but hopefully I can open up a pathway for them to be a little less scared. It has become a big thing that girls have to become so painted and perfect. I certainly think there's a time and a place for that.'
Her nails are painted black and off white with the ying yang design, a metaphor for the extremes that meet within. This is the same person who did an arena tour including a segment where she was dressed as a cup cake, and who over the last year has had hair of every colour of the rainbow, today is looking stripped of it all. She is looking… I'm searching for the word. She tells me 'normal is the word.' But for every part of her that is normal, there is another part that is extreme and extraordinary.
We see in the documentary that she is fearless. Not because she bungee jumps, but because she lets the audience see her heartbreak. 'I love those documentaries where everyone is fabulous and always perfect, but that doesn't relate to everyone and I like to be more relatable than that and I don't want to be above my audience, I want to be one with my audience.'
It is her audience after all and their ability to relate to her that has made her. When record companies wanted to make her into something else she performed her songs in small venues and went by what her audience liked, not her record company. She always had her own vision.
'It's funny seeing footage that I'd filmed at 17, 18, 19 and having such a vision for where I am now and a foresight for where I wanted to be.'
She always knew? 'I always knew it. It was such blind ambition. It was this is what I am doing, nothing is going to get in my way, I am just going to do it and keep doing it and keep trying until it is done.
'People ask me all the time do you know what you are doing next? And I still have the same mindset as I did when I was first moving to LA when I was 17. I know what I'm doing next and then next just because my creative faucet doesn't stop.'
Her Christian upbringing has been well documented, and little understood. One assumes that by the time she sang I Kissed A Girl some kind of gritty rebellion and rejection of values had taken place. Perry is more complex than that.
We hear how when she was growing up she wasn't allowed to watch normal TV programmes and the only videos allowed were Sister Act 2 and The Preacher's Wife. Her world was very narrow, the spectrum of colour muted. No wonder she loves the bold pastel of fairytales and cartoons. No wonder her show is a multi-coloured defiant dreamscape that shows limitless possibilities.
She grew up in sunny suburban Santa Barbara, California - a place that is terrifyingly safe and contained. She always had a passion for self expression and a need to stand out. Yet rather than rebel and reject everything she grew up with she simply transitioned. 'Yes, it was a metamorphosis. But I'm still an insect of sorts.'
Perry loves words. She's excited when she finds the perfect word. She favours it. 'Yes, a transition.' It's how she got from being a gospel recording artist to singing I Kissed A Girl. It feels biblical.
'I've always been an open person. Even in my faith growing up I was always asking questions, like what about this and why is that so. I needed education to back up faith. The landscape was black and white and then I found the colour. I think if you come from a really sheltered place, then you want to be open and free, it's like naturally you want to see the other side of that. But it wasn't as cold and dark and strict as people paint it in their minds.'
In the film she says you can never be too cartoon. 'I think I've executed the cartoon side of me a lot last year and the year before.'
The layer cake dress, the spiralling breasted dress, the Alice In Wonderland dress… 'All of those costumes will be displayed in different theatres with the movie.
I love that it's becoming such a big event. And I didn't know that when I was doing it. I had the seed of an idea. I love to go big. I'm not afraid of the mainstream and selling out in all the right ways. I'm proud of the things that I've achieved and the landscapes that I have covered and I hope the film does the same thing.'
Like the film Perry is mainstream but extreme. It's a riveting combination. We see the intimate songs performed in huge auditoriums around the world. We see the audience connecting with the outsider, making her an insider, we see her being loved. There is a moment where she talks about how in the past, when she heard other women saying that if you become really successful you have to concentrate on that and not have a relationship. She always thought why can't you have a relationship and be a success? Because surely the person who loves you would support you? She admits that that was wrong.
'It's that continuing blind ambition. For a modern woman it is important to be supported and that there is equality in every aspect and that it's not two halves that make a whole it's two wholes that make a whole. So I have learnt.'
There's a brief pause, a space in which a modicum of sadness or regret may have once seeped in. It's another emotion that fills that space right now. It's an embracing of the truth. An embracing of pain that makes it less painful. An understanding that life is in the present and the future is exciting.
'I've always been ambitious since I was nine years old and that was never going to change. That's exactly me. And the theme of this movie is that everyone wanted to change me along the way and I've stuck to my guns. I am going to continue to be who I was born to be and if there's no accepting of me you are not allowed to be part of me.'
It's been six months since Russell Brand filed for divorce. They were married for 14 months and dated around a year before that. While her career went stratospheric, his faltered. Perhaps that fuelled the gulf between them. Perry, I believe, did everything in her power to keep everything going.
'There's a part in the film where I'm talking about it and I say, "I wont' always be on tour, but this is the way it is now when you have an album out. then you do a tour. Then you come home, rest and recharge." I had planned to rest and recharge in the beginning of this year, then I just threw myself back into work because I think when you are a little bit heartbroken you just throw yourself into it.'
Brand didn't want to wait for Katy's tour to finish before he ended the marriage. There is no way back now. I wonder if he'll watch Part Of Me and see her heartbreak in 3D.
In Sao Paulo she had to be helped on stage. 'My personal problems are not the audience's personal problems and I had to separate the personal and the professional. That's my job as an entertainer.'
I tell her she looked like she was going to die with pain. 'Yes, and I slapped a smile on my face. I wasn't being dragged on stage, I just needed a shoulder to help me walk up the steps. I had to bend over so that my false eyelashes didn't come off. I couldn't let the tears stream because it would ruin the make-up. But I got through it. I'm still here, I'm still singing, I'm still alive. I've learnt a lot and I'm moving forward one step at a time.'
On the Graham Norton Show recently she said her dance card was very full but she wasn't quite sure who she was dancing with. 'Yes, because that's how you answer that type of question on Graham Norton.'
Well, how full is her dance card? 'I really wish I had more time to be cuddled right now but I don't, and I'm very particular.'
She has been pictured with Robert Ackroyd, guitarist with Florence and the Machine. 'Yes, he is a boy, but there is no label. I'm just hanging out with lots of dancers. It's not appropriate for me to have something serious right now. I need to let my heart heal and to to digest life and to take a break really.
'As of August 1 I don't have anything planned and I think it's going to be alright for people not to see me for a minute. There are plenty of gorgeous peers out there to put out songs for them. I have to recharge batteries and hopefully I'll come back with an abundance of things to say and great songs. I'm going to get bored and I'm going to stay bored. I'm going to enjoy the world on my own terms, do some reading, catch up on films, I'm just going to be. No plans allowed.'
She has started making notes and taking down phrases and moods for her new album. I am sure there will be some great songs inspired by recent events. She smiles: 'Somehow you can say things more when they are on top of a melody.'
Is she afraid perhaps of falling love again? 'No, absolutely not. I'm excited for the future whatever it brings. This is a year about me being creative and finding a new evolution of my music. I don't think I can always be the candy queen. I might end up starting to become bitter sweet. I have to evolve and I have to continue to push people's perceptions of me. As an artist I like to do that. I don't always want to be pegged to the one thought or idea because I love keeping people on the edge of their seats.'
She is clever, funny, warm and despite her protests utterly beguiling with no make-up. More than all of this, courageous.

Katy Perry arrives for lunch in the Dorchester all tartan restaurant. She looks like a 1930s diva in a silk playsuit, the colour of You Don't Know Jacques nail polish, beige grey, and Stephen Webster jewellery and a big fat diamond engagement ring.

The waiter is floured when she asks for cucumber, avocado and baked beans. She gives a naughty smile. She likes being eccentric.

Her single California Girls has just gone to number one and her album Teenage Dream, soon to follow, is set to establish her in the big time. Many of the songs have been inspired by her boyfriend soon to be husband Russell Brand.
"Russell's coming in tonight and he's going to watch the football (England v. Germany). I'm going to take his mum and go shopping because I'm sure he doesn't want me there getting too animated."

Would she be supporting England even though she's American? "I feel really English sometimes. This restaurant is over posh. It's like the servers haven't left for 200 years and they continue to live as ghosts. And perhaps there's a Scottish terrier that will be just wandering around. I am more of a cat person because I like earning affection."

I'm wondering if that's something that she and Russell have in common? "I think I'm the ying to his yang and vice versa."

People were a little shocked when evangelical Christian minister's daughter Katy first hooked up with bad boy Russell who used to boast about sex addiction and drug cocktails. Since they met last September they have been inseparable and Russell completely monogamous.

Katy is of course gorgeous, clever and funny. But how has she managed to tame him? "It's not about taming. He changed for himself. Everyone knows no one will change unless they want to change themselves."
Do you think it was a case that he just met you at the right time? He was ready for a new phase of his life? "Yes. It was a cosmic collision."

How do you think being a married person will change you? "I think it will be about prioritising things. I won't be able to get smashed all the time, but I don't want to. I won't be able to waste hours on the internet, but I don't need to. I have to be very precious with my time because I need time for myself individually and I want time with him. It's just about the balance."

Is there any talk of babies? "No. I've yet to get into that head space. Babies in a few years. If you see a bump it's just water retention. I do have a new kitten, Krusty (Katy and Russell equals Krusty).
"She's a lesbian," she announces. Does that mean you've been kissing her? "All the time." She shows me pictures on her Blackberry of the new kitten. Russell kissing Krusty. Krusty in a teapot. Krusty in a West Ham slipper.

She's very excited about her cats - Kitty Purry and Krusty, and Russell's cat Morrissey. Does she still get excited about number one records? "Of course I do." Who does she call to celebrate? "Russell, my mum, Krusty, Morrissey, Kitty Purry. I collect them all into one room and say, 'You'd better button up that tux, Morrissey. Straighten up and stop scratching me. We've hit number one."

There's not much chance of her and Russell and the kitties setting up home in London because Russell has just sold his place here. Aside from that she says, "I will miss it. I'll miss the formalness of everything. I also like how English people, if they don't like you they don't like you to your face. But my serotonin levels would be all fucked up because of the weather. I'm a sunshine person. If the sun doesn't come out my personality doesn't come out."

Her eyes widen. They are big blue kitty cat eyes. Her face is gorgeously glowing, flawless. "I have regular facials with Maki Maodus at Ole Henriksen. I tried different things to compare it to, but Maki, with the oatmealy honey smell that comes from her steam I crave. I'm addicted to all the creams she uses. I love her… If cats had jobs they would probably give facials, wouldn't they."

Does she have a diet or exercise regime - she looks kind of perfect, all skinny and curvy? "I skip rope and I eat greens," she says succinctly. She exudes a kind of confidence that seems pure. She's not afraid to stand up to her record company bosses. There's a song on her album called Peacock - cute, double entendred, racy - that they didn't like. "They were all a bit worried with the word cock and it gave me déjà vu because they did the same thing with Kisses A Girl. They said we don't it as a single, we don't want it on the album. And I was like, 'You guys are idiots.'"

And what about Cheryl or Lady Gaga? "I knew Lady Gaga a little bit when she was coming up and I love her music. I've never met Lily but I'm a big fan. I don't know Cheryl's music but I love her dimples." She smiles as if she wishes well on all the world and then tells me she's very busy planning a wedding so no one will find out where it is. "My cats will be involved of course. Krusty will be the flower girl."
She got her own way and I Kissed A Girl was a worldwide smash. "I feel very constant. I always try and make a lasting impression with the people who are letting me make a small music video or a big music video, you know. And I work very hard. My father has a saying, 'You can't be a flash in the pan.' This record is important to me because it will resonate the fact that One Of The Boys (her last album) wasn't just luck."

She has a Jesus tattoo. Is that because she loves Jesus? "Yes. I got it when I was 18 and that is because I love Jesus."
Her father is a minister and her parents were strict, yet she gets on fantastically well with them. "Because my ultimate goal was never to be rebellious towards my parents. I first started singing with singing in church. My parents were strict but they weren't stiff or stuffy. We still had fun. I just wanted to be allowed to do some of the things that normal kids were doing. I wasn't allowed to watch MTV or listen to any pop music.

"When I moved out I just became this living, breathing, eating, shitting sponge. It didn't matter what genre music it was, I was just give it to me." Because you felt you'd been deprived? "Yes, of course. I've always been an open person. I was never a kid who just took it. I was always like why, why, why. And that question has got me a long way. I moved, I transitioned. My parents and I now have a lovely relationship. Probably because they realise I am not going to turn into a crazy person or a prostitute or a Charles Manson."

Do they worry about songs like Peacock? "They haven't heart Peacock yet. There is a little red button that is constantly pushed with them and sometimes the red has pretty much worn off around it."
Did it wear off with I Kissed A Girl? "No, it was still there then but it was wearing off when I called and said, 'Mum, I'm naked in a cotton candy cloud.' Or 'I'm marrying Russell Brand.' They really didn't know about him. They always give people the benefit of the doubt and it's up to the person to mess it up."

Did Russell mess it up or charm them? "He's very charming with them and he has an ongoing email love letter with my mum and she loves it. She flirts with him, which is totally inappropriate and I tell him to stop."

Somehow I think Russell is never going to stop. But it's probably better that he's flirting with Katy's mum than random other girls.

Another song, Firework, is inspired by Russell. "Russell showed me a passage from On The Road by Jack Kerouac and he said that this is what I am. The passage read, 'I want to be around people that are buzzing and fizzing and never say a commonplace thing and shoot across the sky and make everybody go ah.' So that has been my life statement."

If Russell was a firework what would he be? "He's all of them mixed into one. He's the grand finale. I am one that has little gold leaves that fall like gold dust into the sea. He's the one with all the noise."

Are those two fireworks compatible? "They're always in the same show, aren't they." She smiles her quirky little smile.
I wonder though if it is hard living with someone so flashy. Is there no ego clash? "All comedians are interesting characters plagued by their own genius; funny but very serious."
Has she become more serious? "I think I could be more spontaneous but now my time off is more scheduled. I still love to go out with my friends and I still like Pinot Grigio. But I've learnt from some of my hangovers I don't drink as much as I used to. My last big night out was probably Coachella (California's Glastonbury). We had little golf carts to get from place to place but the golf cart broke and it was the middle of the night and we were coming back from a concert. We had to walk miles and then we saw another golf cart and got in it, but we got completely stuck again. I'm happy that Russell is sober because it's had a good influence on me. It steers me in a more positive direction."

Russell is about to start filming the remake of Arthur. He told me that he thought Katy would be perfect to play the Liza Minnelli character. "I guess she had dark hair and is a singer, but I could never beat Liza Minnelli, and he is going to be brilliant in it."

Would you like to work with him though? "We work together well in the relationship because there's no arguing. There is debating and you can do the same thing with a director. It's really important to have your communication on the same level if you want to get the best out of both worlds. I don't want to be the couple who make the mistake of working together and it ends up embarrassing. Who knows? I don't think I'm ready."

Besides, next year she plans that "I'm going to be touring my ass off. It's probably one of the reasons I exist. I never want to come off as too mysterious, detached or unreliable. I love the personal connection between people."

Has she ever said anything she regretted? I'm thinking some of the more barbed quips about Lily Allen. "I'm sure there are things that I've said that have been taken out of context. But just so everybody knows for the record. I like Lily very much."

When I first met Katy Perry a few months ago I was overwhelmed by her huge sense of self. She seemed absolutely certain who she is, what she wants, with a kind of meteoric inner drive.
She comes though softly packaged in silky slinky clothes and super-sensitivity. There's an urgency that she must grab everything now.
I first heard of Katy Perry a couple of years ago, long before she kissed a girl. My facialist Maki is her facialist. She told me as soon as her fingers had pitter-pattered across her her delicate cheekbones that her new client was going to be the most famous girl in the world. She was so naughty, so sexy, and so Christian.
The combination didn't make sense to me. There were two failed record deals before her current megastardom. Perhaps it's because of them that she makes sure she never relaxes. She is never less of herself as she believed that being moulded into what's the vogue of the moment just dilutes you into failure.
Her current world tour is about expressing every particle of herself. Her cartoon sexuality, dizzying costume changes, fireworks, her love of her cats, and her love of "hubby" Russell Brand - it's an enormous show in every sense. And the tour is almost a year long, and just after getting married that means there's almost no domestic downtime. She'd never want that pause, give up on her music career. She wants to make sure it never gives up on her.
Marriage to Russell Brand could have worked against her, eclipsed her. But instead the symbiosis of their single fame has made for mega celebrity wattage. Their relationship seemed implausible chemistry at first. Minister's daughter meets former sex addict and falls in love. But in fact they are more similar than different. Both love to be quirky almost to the point of outrage. Both have fast minds filled with funny lines. And both of them have a strong sense of spirituality which they manage sometimes to disguise. More of that later.
I am in Nottingham where Perry is to play the Arena. Outside little girls are in alien masks so they look like mini aliens from Perry's video E.T. Although not quite like Perry in that video where her make-up makes her almost unrecognizable. The rest of her is taut, sinewy, and naked. First off she looks like a fairy and then reveals her lower half is that of a fawn.
Little girls love Perry and the show caters for this. It's pink cotton candy. It's Wizard of Oz meets Charlie and the cup cake factory. It's David LaChapelle kitsch. It's Lucille Ball kooky. It's Carry On Down The Yellow Brick Road in the ultimate push-up bra. It's kitty cats and red sequined shoes. One time there are seven costume changes in one song; it's more of a magic trick. It's glitter bustiers and cup cake crinolines that light up. It's more is more. It's a metaphor for her work ethic that nothing is ever enough, to make sure people are pleased. No tiny sequin of a detail has gone unchecked by Perry herself.
She's on stage for two hours singing, dancing and bantering about the weird love triangle that is "my husband, myself and you, you sexy little Brits." Then she'll tell us that every song she's put out has gone to Number 1. (Her last four singles California Gurls, Teenage Dream, Firework and E.T. got to Number 1 in the US). "And that's because of you. I owe you. It feels nice to be loved." She says it jokey but she means it. I got the same message backstage when I met her before the show.
I made my way through racks of multi-coloured fluffy costumes and dancers in candy-striped trainers. Perry has summoned me to sit on her hot pink sofa. It travels with her. She is wearing a plush cream bathrobe, nothing else, except a glossy black wig that's part Wonder Woman, part Betty Page. She's presented with a dark pink drink.
"Beets, carrots, ginger, maybe some pear. I have it every day." It's an LA style smoothie that's made it's way to Nottingham. "No it's just by the end of this tour I'll be looking like Edith Piaf in La Vie En Rose if I don't drink it. It's really exhausting and I'm trying to build stamina. My knees have world tour written all over them." She shows me bruised and bloodied knees, one deep cut. "I got that one a while back. I'll have to get it lasered off at some point. It just adds to my tomboy look."
There is part of her that's a gutsy tough tomboy, but the rest of her is extreme girl. A kind of Disney princess that has a superpower of extreme focus. She explains the bruising came from "a guitar solo interaction with my guitarist. And I had all this extra energy, so I slid through his legs and that felt very rock 'n roll. So I've been doing it every night since." Indeed she crashes on to the ground hard and slides fearlessly.
An assistant comes in with some vitamins. "Irons and Bs and multis. I take one pill that's for moisture for my voice so that when I'm on stage I don't get cotton-mouth. They are like horse pills. I also do no caffeine, although on my days off I might have a latte or something with cheese on it or a Bud Lite. But that's cheating. I'm proud that I haven't turned into a fully-fledged drug addict. I have no choice. I have to stay on the straight and narrow. We started the tour in February and we are going to extend it possibly to December. I think a year of being really good is important. It's an extraordinary thing for me to play this size of venue three to four years into my career. I get to take chances and utilize a lot of different opportunities."
She's grateful. She never separates herself from that feeling of being knocked back and not allowed to be who she was. Although that seems a very long time ago. She was first discovered when she was 15 singing gospel in her parents' church in sleepy Santa Barbara, California. She went to Nashville to record with country Christian rock veterans and learn the tricks of songwriting. The subsequent album failed. When she was 17 she moved to Los Angeles to pursue pop singing dreams. She was signed by Def Jam Island, released an unsuccessful album, then was signed by Columbia in 2004 and again was dropped. When she was signed by EMI Virgin she knew it could be her last chance.
"I'm a professional. I appreciate hard work and I know it takes an extra level of hard work to do this kind of thing. We've been filming everything. I'm not sure what we're going to do with it or to what end, but this moment is special and I want to document it."
It's like when people fall in love, they write poems because they want to remind themselves that these intense feelings of love existed. It feels so unbelievable they have to write it down to make it true. "We might put an episode online. It's nice because it gets to show that this is a lot of hard work."
There's nothing covert about her. She doesn't want to hide anything. There's something refreshingly old school about her candour.
"I feel very indebted. Touring to me feels like a debt repaid but in a good way. When people support you so much you owe them actual face time. I'm not always feeling 100 per cent. Four days ago I was sick in bed and went to the doctor. And now I have this lovely bruise on my butt from a steroid shot. I didn't want to reschedule. You have to have a certain level of accountability. People have bus times, baby sitters. I'm not saying I'll never cancel because I'm human."
She whips up her robe to show me the giant butt bruise. It's large and purple. I'm not sure why she wanted to show me the bruise's graphic detail. Maybe so I could see just what lovely buttocks she has. Maybe because she likes to show and tell.
"I got a B, an antibiotic and a steroid. I got it in LA so I could get on the plane." For her four days off she decided to fly from the UK to LA to be with her husband and cats. It seems pretty tough to me, but she is uncomplaining and happy she got to spend time there.
Do they Skype? "Yes, of course. We Skype and Krusty talks (the cat that is the feline love child of Katy and Russell, hence made up of both names). They all love clicking on the computer. That's when I feel most safe and comfortable when I'm sitting in my house with my cats." It strikes me as odd that suddenly there is talk of a need to feel safe. She did tell me once that she didn't like sleeping in the dark.
"I sleep with the lights on unless I'm with Russell. I think a lot of evil things go on in the dark. I have to cover my toes because I'm that kid who thinks there's a witch under my bed who's going to eat my tootsies off. I have nightmares."
She plucks out a throat pastille from a tiny box. Her finger nails are striped in candy cane Minx. She designed them herself. "These are for my voice. I've got lots of tricks. I'm sticking to vegetables and steamed things, some poultry. I don't like the taste of fish. No caffeine. No alcohol. "It sounds boring but I think what I'm achieving."
In the corner is an elliptical machine. She says that she did 40 minutes on it today. "I only do 40 minutes on show days because a show is about two hours and I don't want to exhaust myself. I hate it. I'd rather be lying in bed reading books and watching my favourite TV programmes. Lots of English telly. I like My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding. And I like Morgana. And I like Charlie Brooker."
She's very Britified. "Well of course," she purrs, "with the help of my husband. I think the British always have a dial on the things that are cool first. The music over here is one of the things I loved first. Especially the women like LaRoux, Marina and the Diamonds. And of course Morrissey. I've just met him once and he was very lovely to me and very unique."
Brand's cat is named after him. "The cat has some of his attributes. He's always coming into the room with this attitude oh you again, I can't be bothered, not unless you are going to feed me, and I won't eat, I won't eat next to the other cats. He's a black and white cat and it looks like he's wearing a tux all the time but a bit disheveled. Kitty Purry just got a nice trim, a lion cut. That means she's got hair all around her face and neck but nowhere else. That's perfect. And Krusty, so adorable. When I was sick the other day she was really sweet to me. Very protective. Pets are wonderful because they are constant love, non-judgemental, so sweet.
"Krusty is a lesbian. She's such a tomboy. But she's such a girl and she's very proud of who she is." Sounds like people really are their pets and Krusty and Perry really are very similar. Perry even looks like a cat with big blue wide kitty cat eyes and little kitty cat nose. I wondered if that's one of the things that first connected her with Brand?
"I am more of a cat person because I like earning affection." The earning, the working of her debt for people's affection is core to her. Of Brand she says, "I am the ying to his yang and vice versa."
Much was made in the beginning of their relationship that Perry and her Jesus background tamed him. "It's not about taming. He changed for himself."
I first met Brand three weeks after he'd met Perry and he pretty much told me the same thing. He'd changed. He was ready to be loved by one person instead of seeking the attention/affection of many. And even though they don't see each other much due to extreme work commitments, they are extremely communicative, as you'd expect from the woman who first expressed her love in sky-writing. Her Twitter is full of "go hubby go" and "how cute is my baby boy" referencing picture of him in Arthur. "Yes, he's working really hard right now and I'm working really hard right now." Brand has had two movies out back to back, Hop and the unmissable Arthur.
Did she get to see much of him? "Yes, I see him. I planned my tour around being a professional and a married woman. I planned my tour eight months ago. I had four days off and those four days off were to see him. It's a lot of pre-planning but at least the slots are there. He already came on the tour four times."
Does she feel different when he's around? "No, but I get certain tips from him about my banter back and forth with the audience. I ask him what all the football teams are because that's good fo I am thinkr the boys who have been dragged along by their girlfriends.
"When I was in Dublin he said don't forget Oscar Wilde is from Dublin and when I was in Manchester he said that is where Oasis is from. He's always giving me bits and pieces."
They are both over the top extreme, but have huge spirits and are not bored with one another.
Did marriage change her? "Well yes. I think when you're a single person there's an energy that you're always looking for another half. The stresses and other things. Then when you get married you're like 'oh, I can take this energy and put it somewhere else'. You feel relieved in so many ways. When you find someone that is your other half you feel a sigh of relief. It's a beautiful thing to have a partner that nourishes you and gets you and will always be there for you and gets you on so many levels you don't have to do any explaining. You can make one expression and they understand the mood you're in. your ultimate team mate."
Does she believe in soul mates? "People label things however they want to and I'm not labeling him anything. He's my husband. But I would love to think that that's the case. When we're on our deathbeds and forever is over we'll know."
The notion that forever is over is perhaps something that haunts Perry. The songs might be dressed up in pink and Firework sparkly and inspirational, its riff used on all the trailers for American Idol. It's played all the time, yet there is darkness to it.
The song was first conceived when Brand showed her a passage from On The Road by Jack Kerouac which said something like I want to be around people who are buzzing and fizzing, who are full of life and never say a commonplace thing, they shoot across the sky like a firework.
"And I like the idea that when I pass away I'll be put in a firework and be shot across the ocean in Santa Barbara. That's always been what I wanted for my last hurrah. It's poetic. But it's not about romance."
It is about the eternal though, what lasts forever and what doesn't. She has Jesus inked on her wrist. Does she observe this? "I observe it because It's on my wrist but I don't necessarily make it a moment every day. Mostly it's having a heart of gratitude and being appreciative. This is my job and it's a fun one. I should be humbled every day, which is basically a head frame I have. Not to take the piss out of playing a stupid game of spirituality. That's not who I am. Who I am if want to put my head and my heart in the right position, so when I'm giving out my energy it's pure." She got the tattoo when she was 18 "because I love Jesus."
It's impossible to erase her spiritual upbringing no matter how much she sings about kissing girls and loving peacock cocks and wondering what it would be like to have cream to explode from her nipples. Her parents taught her about God and the devil. Her childhood was seeped in it. She took it all in. she questioned it, but she didn't quite rebel. She never fell out with her parents although there were some "transitions" involved.
I've always thought that Brand looked like Jesus, so maybe that was the main attraction after all. The depths of the spiritual instruction she grew up with doesn't go away.
"No it doesn't. I'm different. The roots are the same but there's a sift. For me the general wonderful things I learnt about were about respect and integrity, the difference between right and wrong. I think everyone in their own upbringing had their own silly rooms. Each family is unique and they have their own quirks. Mine was no devilled eggs and no MTV. Instead we had to call them angels eggs, just really small nuanced things like that."
For her Jesus is as indelible as that tattoo. The juxtaposition of spiritual integrity and overt sexuality is a fascinating one. She takes with her on tour a box of prayers. My grandmother used to have a similar box where you take out one prayer every day and it gives you guidance or wisdom for that day. She says, "Yes, my costume designer got it at an estate sale. They're ancient. 60 years old. The King James's version of the Bible. It's nice to have a regime that we can all be part of. We go into a circle, read our little prayer. We do it at the top of the show. You'll see it later." She seems keen that I can see this spiritual aspect.
"I think I've always been looking for answers. Wherever you come from as a child you swear you are not going to be like your parents, you're going to be totally different and never look back. And when you look back it's right behind you, breathing on you.
"I started off in gospel music when I started singing in church. I'd moved out of the house and everything. It didn't matter what genre it was, I was like give it to me."
There is indeed something insatiable about her. The curious thing as well as wanting it all, she wants to pay for it all, feel like she's earned it all. Quite punishing.
She hates flying, is scared of it even, yet makes herself do it she is so grateful to be on a world tour. "I get to the venue, work out, eat, dress, do make-up, we do our circle, do a meet and greet, do the show. When the show is over I'm on a tour bus. That's the price you pay."
It's a recurring theme - price you pay, her debt, her bargain. Is she happy? "Yes, I feel very fulfilled. I'm not always in the Snow Whitest of moods because my humour is very cynical and sarcastic anyways. I'm here because people put me here. I'm responsible to give payback. I am close to my fans and I feel indebted to them. I wouldn't say I'm the most spiritual in the world, but I'm very aware of how small I am in this big world and every day is a chance to remember where I came from, every day is a chance to ask for humility and grace. I have a constant feed between me and God and every day is like 'don't become too proud, remember where you came from, be positive.'"
Perry may well have encouraged spirituality in Brand but he was already on the way to devouring mysticism and acquiring his own spiritual guru Radhanath Swami. Her mother finds Brand charming. She feels that he is going to be "a great man of God and his transition is happening." She says she has a "lovely" relationship with her parents. She is a middle child. Her older sister is on tour with her organizing meets and greets. Her brother is an actor in LA.
Is it true she bought her mother a facelift? "Oh no, I did not. She aged well and by her own choices. There are quite a few things that are written about me that aren't true."
Is it true that her mother slept with Jimi Hendrix? "That's also not true. She danced with him."
What about her father. Was he really best friends with Timothy Leary? "He was a hippy and he went to Woodstock and he was an acid dealer. He was associated with that famous dealer of acid and psychedelics. I'm sure he was just one of many, but that is his testimony."
Testimony in that religion is like in AA when you say 'I'm an alcoholic' or saying aloud the act of contrition.
"So they've had their wild days too. Now they are ministers and they've been ministering for over 35 years. We all came from somewhere. I have to remember that not everybody knows and it would obnoxious to think that they all should know. I'm fine with it."
I read that when she was in India she engaged the services of a mystical psychic parrot. So much weird stuff is written about her it's hard to sift the truth. "I think it might have been trained. Sorry to burst your bubble. But the whole idea of the tarot parrot was the sound of those two words together. That was the only reason I hired it."
You wonder how much she enjoys fame if it is indeed more of a restriction. Paparazzis chase her constantly. Stories with even less truth than the psychic parrot sprinkle the tabloids, made up fights with other girl pop stars, fictitious rows and melodramas.
"When I was nine-years-old and started singing I didn't think ooh fame, I thought songs, stage, costumes, exciting performances, making your own record. Those were the key ingredients to it. Being on the cover of a magazine, those are byproducts and I try not to give it too much energy. I don't like tabloids and I don't like paparazzi. I don't feel I owe them anything. I don't necessarily mess with them. when I see them I never pose unless I'm working. I always take back doors. Never condoning this kind of activity because I think it's disgusting. It's spineless. Some places are worse than others. Nobody should want to sign up for that.
"I'm four months Google free," she announces, sounding straight out of an addiction meeting. "I don't Google myself any more. That was my New Year's resolution. I don't read papers. I don't even look at reviews. I have a good team around me so if anything pops up that's really good or bad I'll know about it. All the things I need to see I see. Generally I feel much better being able to live my life like a normal person and not read yesterday's news. It's intense but I don't play into it and I don't give it any energy. I'm careful of certain things I say and I do. If I know the interview is being recorded I can be a little wilder because you're seeing me. But if I'm doing a print interview where there are only so many words that are being put into an article and I know I'll be edited so I'm just very aware of what I say."
Has she changed in this respect? "I think I have become a lot more focused and my bullshit tolerance has gone. I like working with great people, I like putting on a great show. I appreciate good people and relationships, my family and friendships, and my fans are really important to me. If you fuck with my fans you fuck with me. You dn't want to fuck with Mama Bear."
Have you sifted out a lot of people? "No, I've always stayed away from those types of people. when you're going to different levels not everyone can get there. if they have greatness within them they can rise to that level. Some people just don't want to go there. I want to be a better version of myself every day. I want to evolve. I believe if you are not changing all the time then you are not moving forward. You're stuck."
Weirdly the whole arena smells of candy floss although there's none of it in sight. It must be all the bubble gum pink that's auto-suggesting it. In fact the backstage food is made by a team of chefs that specialize in delicious organic food. Both her managers are here on tour with her and one of them talks in a delightful Alabama accent which adds to the syrupy warmth. There's a quiet announcement that her single E.T. is Number 1 in the US. Everyone cheers and their joy seems genuine and she much loved.
Perry and her band and dancers in multi-coloured pastel furriness and candy striped sneakers gather in their circle. Perry herself is looking more and more like Wonder Woman. She arches back as if she is mustering her super powers. I wait expecting a little prayer asking Jesus to guide the show into loveliness. All their heads go down like a rugby scrum and they shout "Robin Hood!" and head for the stage.

Monica Bellucci comes into the room and the room gasps. We are backstage at the Dolce & Gabbana fashion show in Milan. The room is dark, lit by floral chandeliers. Monica is wearing a dramatic black lace blouse, black flared jeans and dominatrix heels. Her long black hair is a silk sheet. She is not model tall. She is womanly with a magnificent décolletage.

Bellucci, 47, is known for her daring film choices like Mary Magdalene in The Passion and a rape victim in Irreversible. She is married to the actor Vincent Cassel, 45, who always seems to go for the sadistic roles, most notably as the artistic director who slept with the leading dancers in Black Swan.

She is Italian. Her essence, her style, her embrace are all Italian. He is French. And together they have two children Deva, seven, and Leonie, two. The family have houses in Italy, France, England and Brazil - though Monica, who comes from Citta di Castello in Umbria says her heart will always be in Italy.

We have met to discuss her latest role - as the face (or at least the lips) of the new Dolce & Gabbana lipstick, which comes in shades ranging from the dramatic Magnetic Monica, which is a compelling purple, to the classic red Chic Monica. Even Natural Monica, which is the most understated in dark beige, manages to look standout. Monica is wearing it for our interview to demonstrate that on her less is still more. "I have always loved lipstick, she says. "For women, that love comes from our mother and grandmothers. It seems so natural for a woman to open up her mirror, look in it and apply lipstick." Here she happily discusses the joys of motherhood, marriage and her favourite Monica lippy.

I have been friends with Domenico and Stefano (Dolce & Gabbana) a very long time. We've done many beautiful things together, beautiful campaigns and they make beautiful clothes. We are close friends and I respect everything they do. I love what they do. Their clothes are sensual and elegant at the same time. They are real artists who love and respect women. Their inspiration is Italy - our culture and our tradition. They are inspired by great Italian movies - by Fellini and Rossellini and those amazing Italian leading ladies like Sophia Loren and Anna Magnani. And you can feel like one of these women in their creations. They have such a strong identity and you can tell they are Italian.

I am Italian through and through. Wherever I go I am Italian. The way I talk, the way I eat, the way femininity is important to me. The way I love Italian food. For this season's fashion campaign Dolce & Gabbana shot me eating at a picnic with a family. That is beautiful - it's not about the biological beauty, it's about another kind of beauty. It's about the womanliness that comes to your face and your body from your life and your experience.

I met Vincent working on a movie - my first French movie The Apartment. And we have now been together for 17 years (married for ten). It was not an instant thing, not at all. I was attracted to him - at the same time I wasn't sure of him. We got together, I don't know why. I feel we don't really choose the person we are with. It happens for us - they are there and that was how it was and that's how it is. For now.

You never know how long it will last. I can never say what's going to happen. Of course I'd be very happy if we were together forever. But I don't know. You never know. You should never take things for granted, especially in a relationship. But we do have our children and the love of them means that that love is forever. I hope our relationship will be forever but live this day by day. My relationship with Vincent has changed since we had children. We were together 10 years as a couple - a long time - so of course everything changed but for the good. I accept the fact we can never be in one place {because of our work} and so does he. This is our life. We are like gypsies travelling around.

I always wanted children late; I had my first daughter at 39 and the second at 44. Before that I wasn't ready to become a mother. I wasn't ready for something so incredibly huge, something that would change my life forever. I think it was because I am an only child. In a way I always felt a child - too much into myself. I worried I wouldn't be ready to give myself. When the first one came, I thought I'd have another really quickly because I knew I didn't have much time left. I was breastfeeding for the longest time and ultimately I wanted to have time with just her and be really confident with and know who she really is before I could get pregnant with my second. I was lucky to get pregnant at 44. We didn't have to try for a long time. It was natural.

I would have been disappointed if I had left it too late to have a second child. But life is hard sometimes and you just have to accept things. They will either happen or won't happen - it's not in our hands. We have to be really humble and accept destiny. Some things happen that you just can't change.

I have really changed since having my daughters. I feel more complete and they helped me grow up. In a way they help me escape from my childhood, which was like a prison to me. Not that my parents weren't great, they were. But because I was an only child there was some loneliness, a disconnectedness. It was difficult for me to come out of these feelings. I had plenty of cousins and people around me, but always that same loneliness that made me sad. It was strange because now on the other side of it I feel that need for aloneness, a need for freedom, a need to be just by myself. And at the same time having children helped me learn how to love and be connected fully with others.

My children make me happy. When they are calm and sleeping in their beds I look at them and say, 'love you.' That makes me calm and happy. There are some days though where I wake up in the morning and maybe someone I know is not doing so well or the world is not doing well, and I feel sad. Usually I wake up happy. I have a cappuccino and maybe I'll see a friend and everything feels fine to me. Usually I'm only sad when something sad happens. I am not a melancholic person. I like to live very much in the present. If I was an animal I'd be a little cat. They know the best things in life - they like to live life. My animal instincts come out every day. I feel that is important.

I travel so much that my oldest daughter speaks four languages - Italian, French, English, and Portuguese. I speak a little Portuguese but my daughter speaks it better than me. I always feel Italy is my home but it is important for my husband that we also live in France. Sometimes we live as a family all together but as we are two working actors sometimes we have to be apart. Sometimes I'm shooting a movie, sometimes he is. Now that we have the kids we try to make it that if one is working the other doesn't work. The ideal would be if we could work together. We have worked together before but not in a long time. Luckily we are going to be doing a new movie together in Brazil. It is a love story about a couple who have been living together a long time and problems develop because they have lived together so long. They separate and we see how they deal with that. It will be filmed in Brazil and it's going to be in Portuguese and English.

I don't know if my work/life balance is perfect. I don't work all the time. That's why I waited to have kids until I was ready for that. I try to organise my time according to my kids because my kids need me. I don't want to put my work first anymore because it's not as important as my kids.

We are so scared about losing beauty as we age. I try not to worry about these things. I am scared about death because I have two kids and I want to see them grow up. There is nothing you can do about getting older, you just have to deal with it. Before I had children I didn't think about death and I didn't really feel that I was ageing. When I had my second child at 45 I felt old because I realised that I felt much stronger physically when I was younger. Having said that, I feel much better in myself mentally today than when I was 20. I am confident and I deal with my problems better. I accept who I am and that perfection doesn't exist. I did a Vanity Fair shoot when I was pregnant In 2004. I didn't care about being fat and pregnant. I think it's beautiful.

Sometimes I think if I gain weight I will just wear black because it's easier. I used to never work out. And even now I don't like to work out every day. I don't like to watch what I eat every day. I don't want to be a machine. After my second daughter was born I realised that I needed to pay more attention to workout regimes. Before then it was much easier.

I have just finished an Iranian movie (Rhinos Season) which is coming out this year. I play an Iranian woman who is living 30 years after the revolution in Iran. (The movie is a love story set against the backdrop of the political changes in Iran from before the revolution to the present day). And I'm about to shoot a French movie where I play an over-the-top Italian, very exaggerated. It is a comedy and the first time I've done comedy. I'm looking forward to that. I think I can be funny.

The most important thing for my daughters is to find a passion in their lives. I want them to find that passion. When we are growing up we want to please our parents, as we grow older we have to articulate what we want for ourselves. I intended to study law at university (in Perugia). But there was a moment where I was asked to do some modelling and from that I fell in to acting. That was difficult time for me because all my friends were coming out of university and I didn't know what to do with my life. I didn't know if movies would be my future. I was really insecure. I felt really lucky that movies worked for me. You have to be ready to accept whatever happens. I certainly didn't have the answers then.

I have a house in London and I come back to London all the time. I have some good friends there. In Italy we are much more provincial. In Britain you are much more courageous, especially in the way you dress. I feel a freedom there and that people care less about what people think. I don't know if I dress differently there. In fact I usually dress in Dolce & Gabbana, but because of the way the clothes make me feel.


Monica On Make-Up….

I always wear some make up, even on quiet days when I am not doing so much with my time. I like to start using Perfect Finish Creamy Foundation as a base as it's lighter than air and doesn't make me feel 'caked'.


I am also never afraid to try new colours - why not? For lipstick I love all the shades in the Monica Collection and feel drawn to the different shades depending on how I feel. I adore the Attractive one, which is the shade I wore for the advertising campaign. It's a really fulsome red that is just timeless.


When you choose a red colour it's because you feel you want to be looked at more. Sometimes you like this kind of feeling, and sometimes you just want to be natural. When you put on a red shade it's because you accept people looking at you. The red is such a strong colour and it's about you - this is not necessarily a sexual thing. If a man sees a woman with red lipstick he admires her, but often he won't feel like kissing her.

Rules are made to be broken sometimes. I also don't think it's necessarily always the case that you should only play up lips or eyes - sometimes I like to wear a strong lip and then finish the look with a defined eye.

Lipstick is a statement that I'm ready for anything. Even if I pay no attention to anything else, I will put on a layer of mascara and add a slick of lipstick too, even if it's a super natural shade.

I can't compromise on the mascara and even if I'm wearing very soft make up I always wear mascara, usually a black one. It helps me to feel 'finished' and ready for the day. I love to use Dolce & Gabbana Intenseyes Mascara as nothing else creates such a beautiful full, feathered look.


Monica's Hot List

Style Icon: Leading ladies like Claudia Cardinale, Sofia Loren, Gina Lollobrigida, Silvana Mangano…those stars of the golden age who oozed sensuality and feminine charm. I tried to channel that slightly audacious, knowingly provocative attitude in the shoot for my collection.

Favourite book: Irene Nemirosky.

Favourite book: La Dolce Vit

Naomi Watts is sitting in the blonde wood of a chic breakfast eaterie in the moneyed enclave of Brentwood, California. She is tiny with a glowing aura. Her hair is a pale blonde, almost platinum. She is in a cream silk blouse and off-white linen jacket. Her blue eyes look a little sad and a little wise. Her demeanour is relaxed, content even, so much more so than the last time we met which was around a decade ago.
Back then she had everything to gain and everything to lose. She had not long been broken up from a passionately huge relationship with Heath Ledger. Today she has a different kind of love - fulfilling and happy with her partner of seven years Liev Schreiber with whom she has two boys Alexander 'Sasha' Pete, 4, and Sammy Kai, 3.
She adores her boys and her relationship with Schreiber seems complete. As an actor she is A-list and suitably revered. She was Oscar nominated for her raw and riveting performance in 21 Grams, and last year opposite Sean Penn she starred as Valerie Palme, the blonde bombshell spy who was betrayed by the Bush administration. It was another incredible performance.
'Thank you,' she says with palpable proper gratitude. 'Kai was about three months old when we were shooting and that was a really, really hard time because I was breast feeding through the night and that was a really big movie. I wasn't sleeping. I was a woman trying to do everything and there were days where I felt like superwoman and there were days where I thought I can't do it… but it was a great story and you don't always get the invitation and if you've been working for something your whole life you don't want to turn it down. A lot of people can work through their pregnancy until they are pushing out a baby but with acting that's hard. Even if you play a pregnant woman it's hard because of continuity. By the time you've had your baby you've already had eight months off.'
Her career seemed to be peaking at the same time as her pregnancies. She had her sons less than 18 months apart. 'I never expected to have them so close together but I always knew that I wanted more than one. We didn't get pregnant the first time when we said we wanted to, it took a while. We were both surprised that they came so close together. But I'm glad, now. We are in the trenches with them. They are both big personalities, they demand a lot and they fight with each other and it's actually quite tough.'
She doesn't make anything look tough though. She doesn't say she's tired now even if she is. She laughs as she talks about them fighting. Is she trying for more? 'No, no. I'm 43 and I don't know if it could work. Even if it could we are both in a good place right now, they both sleep well and we are out of diaper world and we are in a new phase where they can play well together. There are still fights and struggles all the time but you know, I feel that I am coming into the light. I see my friend who has two girls and they sit and play tea party. My boys will have none of that. They are rambunctious boys with testosterone flying round the room. Allegedly it is supposed to flip. Boys get easier and girls get more complicated. We'll see.'
We order cappuccinos. She says she's already had breakfast early with the boys so orders a small mixed berries. When it comes it's tiny and she looks at it with disappointment and eyes my goat cheese and herb scone. 'I always knew I'd be the mother of two boys, I always had that feeling, just always knew it. I am not psychic by any means but I always saw myself as pushing two boys around.'
Her accent is Australian with touches of England where she spent her first 14 years. 'I'm a tomboy at heart. I have an elder brother and I was never interested in girlie things and never did ballet or anything like that. I did love the idea of having a girl. If I knew I could get pregnant and I knew I was going to have a girl I would definitely go for it.'
We talk about Victoria Beckham and her long quest for baby Harper and the girls diet versus the boys diet: allegedly creamy sugar and spice makes girls and boys come from salty food. 'I am such a salt person.' She grimaces she's always going to get boys. Not that she moans. It doesn't appear that moaning is in her nature. She tells me how grateful she is for the work, for Schreiber, for her boys, for her friends.
She loves to entertain. She's a good cook. 'I like clean fresh food, I cook chicken, I cook fish. I'm not a baker and I don't follow recipes.'
Recently when filming in Australia the people from Jacob's Creek wine approached her to be their ambassador. Her face lights up. 'Imagine, you get this box of wine that comes to your door and you immediately think great, now I can entertain. I can have some kind of gathering and that's what it's all about. The friendship, the lifestyle. You don't want to associate yourself with a brand. You don't know how to represent and I can say with conviction it's absolutely delicious wine. I would be drinking it anyway and it's a great excuse to get friends together. And that's my favourite way to socialise, at home with a home-cooked meal. Being Australian it's all about the lifestyle. People in Australia can just get together for hours and hang. They don't need to be "somewhere".'
With a slightly conspiratorial look on her face she tells me about the movie she's just filmed in Australia. 'It's based on a Doris Lessing novella called Grandmothers. It's very controversial. Two women in their forties who are best friends growing up together and have teenage sons. One husband dies, the other husband leaves and they end up having affairs with each others sons. I love telling stories about flawed and complicated lives.'
Does she feel that when women hit 40 they have a crisis? 'I think it's not gender specific. I think people in their 40s still need to know that they are sexy and alive and vibrant, and things like that take place.'
Her young love interest is played by James Frecheville who was in Animal Kingdom. 'He's grown up a bit since then. He's still 19 so it was a bit awkward. I've never had an age gap that big! But he is a brilliant actor and it's fascinating material.'
Next up is another controversial challenge. She's slated to play Princess Diana in the movie Caught In Flight about the last years of her life. Deep intake of breath. 'We are in talks and working with the script. She was a fascinating character who led a fascinating life, and it's such an undertaking. So far it's not completely real to me,' she says for the first time, looking a little overwhelmed. 'I just don't want to talk about it till I'm doing it.' She squirms slightly, much more daunted by Diana than filming Tsunami with Ewan McGregor, which was mostly shot underwater. 'Lots of underwater filming and climbing up trees. It was intense. It was a great script. If there's anything that connects the work I do it's usually about stories of people wanting to connect to each other and this movie epitomises that.'
She says she chooses a movie by the character, the script, the film maker. She always seems to make intelligent choices. 'I have been lucky because David Lynch plucked me from nowhere and gave me a fantastic role. Every other film maker looks at his work, so that was my lucky break.'
She was 31 when she did Mulholland Drive. The friend that she'd gone to school with, Nicole Kidman, was already a big star. Watts had endured constant rejection and had never had the big break. Did she ever feel like giving up?
'I couldn't walk away from it. Every time I would think I'm just not cut out for this. I can't handle it. It's too much rejection. Just when I was about to give up something would stop me and then I got Mulholland Drive.'
After almost a decade of rejection did she feel she was prepared for success when it happened? 'Yes, it's all about the preparation. That meant I never took anything for granted. The Australian culture has always been great for never letting you take things for granted. It instils in you a good work ethic and a reverence for what you do. There is no sense of entitlement in Australian culture. It goes back to convict mentality. We are grateful, and yes, that was good preparation for me.'
Even the downsides of fame, like the constant paparazzi, she takes in her stride. Although she is based in New York, Schreiber is filming a TV pilot in LA with Showtime - if that kicks off she'll be bicoastal.
'Here - I've been followed around the Farmer's Market. I'm not sure what kind of an interesting picture they got. I live out my life. So what if they get a photograph. There is nothing exciting. I think putting up umbrellas is just going to excite them more. When I go out of my house in New York there is usually one on the corner every day. I am not going to stay inside. In Australia it's bad when you first get there, then they leave you alone.'
Recently she and Kidman were papped having lunch together. It excited comments on Kidman's uncoordinated outfit. She shrugs, 'You know Nicole's the same. You can't live your life in fear of that'
On the whole there doesn't seem to be much fear in Watts' life at all. She and Schreiber's life together seems loving and smooth. 'We met in the spring and I was about to shoot a movie (The Painted Veil) that summer. I remember feeling completely freaked out about leaving because I knew I was going to be on the road for ten weeks. I actually tried to get out of the movie because I couldn't bear to leave him we were so madly in love.
'I asked him if he could do a role in it. It wasn't such a big role and he said yes - after some arm-twisting. It made the part more interesting. We still ended up being separated for a while because his part took only two weeks to film… but you know the rest.'
They were destined for each other? 'Seems like it.' She gives a sweet faltering smile. Did she know as soon as she met him that he was the father of her children? 'No, not exactly. But when I met him I was 36 so yes, it was definitely on my mind. I wasn't looking for a casual fling. He's a big man, an alpha male, and I guess I was a bit like a lioness, I want to breed with you. I thought you are the right protective kind of man. We are primal like that. I saw him with other people's children. I remember thinking how great he was with kids.'
Maybe there's also a psychological hook. Strong accomplished women want an even stronger male? 'Yes, that's right. We are well matched in that way. It's not boring.'
Who is more romantic? 'Good question. In many ways I am but Liev is too. He is not the sort of guy who is going to pick flowers up on the way home every day. But he is incredible in that he will put something together for your birthday or Mother's Day that will blow you away. He's made me a photo book and chosen really fantastic shots and for my 40th birthday he made me a movie that he edited and colour corrected. He put together a surprise party and spent months putting together an incredibly funny film. There would be scenes from all of my movies and then he would film my friends in a cutaway and make new lines that would match up with mine. It was hilarious and really well done.'
Her eyes brighten and widen and she giggles as she talks about it. It's been written that she connected with Schreiber because they both had complicated childhoods. She falters. 'Yeh, sure, we both have got very interesting mothers. Powerful people and important to us in both of our lives. Different countries, same strong bond. His family split up but his father remains alive. Whereas mine…'
Watts was brought up in England and Wales by her mother Myfanwy, a strong woman of eclectic tastes and an antiques dealer. The marriage to her father Peter, road manager and sound engineer for Pink Floyd, broke up and left Myfanwy as a single parent. Some years after her father's death in 1976 - from a heroin overdose - her mother relocated the family to Australia.
'In retrospect what happened was very sad, but at the time it was all we knew. He was someone we didn't know well. They split up when I was about four and he died when I was seven.'
It must be strange to not know somebody because they are never there and then she finishes the sentence '…then they're really not there. Yes.
'When I look at my kids and I see how much their dad is truly connected to them, that for me is very heart breaking.'
It must be hard to love a shadow - her father this crazy rock and roll man must have cast a long shadow. Perhaps without realising it she was looking for him. Suddenly Watt's relaxed, easy demeanour is crumpled. Large tears well in her eyes. Goose bumps all round.
Before Liev there was Heath. The last time we met she had not long been broken up with him and she was quite raw. In fact I had questioned if they might get back together. Heath was alpha male, talented, and very rock and roll. He too casts a shadow.
We grapple to get back into the present. Soon she'll go home to her two boys who will be playing hard or fighting with each other. Did she have a competitive relationship with her brother?
'Oh yes. It's the best and worst thing a kid can have at the same time. Suddenly they have to share everything. But you know what, that's life. It's all about preparation for the big world out there. My brother and I fought before we could talk and now we adore each other. That competitive thing helped us, it made us work hard.'
Few people work harder than Watts. Despite her accomplishments she has no sense of entitlement and no pretentiousness. I'll take a bottle of Jacob's Creek and drink to that.

We are at Sarm Studios, West London. There are faded blue sofas, slightly tatty. The cramped kitchen is 1970s pine. It's a warren of mixing desks, and rooms that have seen history. On the wall are discs and photographs from the glory years. It was once owned by Chris Blackwell. Bob Marley recorded there in the seventies. Sarm Studios is where Do They Know It's Christmas was produced.
In the early eighties it was sold to Trevor Horn and his wife Jill Sinclair, and it became a cathedral of hits, recording studio platinum. Horn produced ABC's The Lexicon of Love and his greatest commercial success was in 1984 with Frankie Goes To Hollywood. Other artists include Paul McCartney, Robbie Williams, Tom Jones, Grace Jones, Seal, Tina Turner, Lisa Stansfield, Pet Shop Boys, Simple Minds, Belle & Sebastian.
Trevor Horn's production defined the sound of the eighties and early nineties. It was about shimmering synthesisers and new aural horizons creating from the just invented technique of sampling - the art of taking an existing recording or sound and digitally manipulating it into a new recording. It gave him his signature sound. It was never heard before. He created a lush sonic duvet which wrapped around you.
He was very much a partnership with his wife Jill Sinclair, who was a tall striking and strident woman with lustrous dark hair, a power house of a woman who liked to call the shots and did. Some musicians feared her. She knew what she wanted and she usually got it.
They met in 1977 when Horn was in a band called Buggles. He talked about recording in the studio she ran with her brother. They ended up in a different kind of partnership. They married in 1980.
When Buggles broke up she became his manager and told him that he should give up being a musician because he could be a first rate producer. Horn agreed because he trusted her implicitly.
In the last few years everything has turned around. He is back in his own studio as a musician with a band of other producers called The Producers. They consist of Lol Creme, 64, Steve Lipson () and Ash Soan, 42. He is 62. Together they have made an album, Made In Basing Street - the address of the studios - and it's full of lush big swirly sounds that are instantly identifiable as Horn's.
His wife wasn't involved in the decision. She has been unable to be involved in anything these past six years. On June 25, 2006, their son Aaron was practising with his air rifle at their country estate, Hook End Manor, Oxfordshire, which was also a recording studio. A pellet entered his mother's neck and severed an artery. The damage was instant. She was rushed to hospital.
It has been written that she went into a coma. Horn has not spoken about this at all since the accident. And today he will put me right on that for the first time. She is not in a coma. Her brain was damaged irreversibly. 'She cannot speak, move, or smile. The only expression she can show is of discomfort.'
It's been six years and he has never been able to talk about it. His only release has been music and the bonding with his peers.
Lol Creme is one of his oldest friends. They met whooping it up at the bar of Le Parker Meridien Hotel in New York when Creme was part of 10cc. Says Crème, 'We've been chums ever since.' Creme is a small man with a slight Mancunian accent. He is wearing denim on denim, a uniform for the elder rock star.
He tells me slightly conspiratorially that they started to record their album at Hook End but Horn couldn't bear to be there. 'Too many memories,' he says gravely, 'You know, the accident. Hook End Manor was beautiful. It was a really creative environment, a special place. That's where the accident happened. Trevor sold Hook End, so we came here and made the rest of it.'
Lipson has just flown in from Los Angeles and Soan is fresh from playing drums for Adele and Sinead O'Connor. They say that making the album made them feel like teenagers again. Lipson says, 'Do I feel 20 again? I would lose the word again, wouldn't you?' He is wonderfully dry. There is no doubt they all look up to Horn. Lipson calls him the 'lion' of the group.
Up a spiral staircase is Horn himself in what used to be a flat lived in by Bob Marley. Large windows, keyboard, couch. It feels friendly. Horn himself is very grey. Grey hair, grey jumper, and a seriousness that seems grey. Odd because his music is Technicolor - bright, vibrant, shimmering, full of life. Horn looks wearied by life.
When I compliment him on his record he looks at me suspiciously. He comes from the north east, suspicion part of his nature. Inability to process emotion in his DNA, yet the album couldn't be more emotional. 'Bits of it are, yes.'
There's a song Your Life that's so emotional it knocks you over like a tank. It's about what happened. His way of processing it. Horn says, 'Yes, it was a metaphorical truck, the accident.
'When we came to write it, it was eight months after my wife's accident and as we'd come up with this line Your Life I said don't worry, I'll write the lyrics for that one. I got sent up here and the guys were downstairs. I wrote them in an afternoon and thought I might as well, I've been making music all my life, I feel miserable, might as well put it down. Just every miserable thing that had happened to me in my life.'
His phone rings, he looks visibly irritated yet answers it. 'I told you. No, no. I've got a new PA starting next week. Can't you ring back and talk to her then.' He shakes his head distressed. He says, 'I get calls every day of people offering me miracle cures. There is no miracle cure.' He looks angry and distraught.
. Why does he pick up a phone to a number he doesn't recognise? He looks puzzled. Maybe you should get a new phone and only give the number to special people. 'No, no, I can't do that. I've got three daughters. I'm a single parent. They always need me.'
I think he has a problem I tell him. He answers the phone because he never wants to say no because he is too insecure to ignore it. His eyes saucer. 'I will demonstrate to you that I don't need it. I am turning it off now. See.'
I think he likes to be needed. After all his daughters are mostly grown up; Rebecca, Gabriella and Ali. 'Not all of them. I've got a 16-year-old. That's not grown up. Kids need you while they're making their way in life. Don't you think it could be that? Or it could be that: I need to be needed. I've never thought about it. I don't think so though.'
His face retreats into himself like a tortoise putting its head into its shell. I call it his northern man face, his nothing will touch me face. 'Northern man face?' Yes, indignant that I've suggested something vaguely emotional. He laughs. He is from the north east, near Durham.
When I tell him I too am from Newcastle he warms and tells me he used to go to Whitley Bay as a kid. 'We went to the Spanish City, a crappy fairground with a few waltzers.
When the band are all together they jostle for attention and there is extreme badinage. When Horn is on his own there is an eerie calmness about him. He says, 'We started talking about doing this album in 2002. And then again when we did the Wembley gig.' This was a Prince's Trust event to honour Horn with being 25 years a producer.
'We started in 2006 because of the tragedy. I think that sort of pushed us into it. Everybody getting together turned out to be like, at least for me, therapeutic really.'
Does he mean it was a kind of catharsis for everything he was feeling, he could express it? 'Yes… I suppose so.' Northern man face comes on. 'Oh God, have I? I'll try not to do it. You were right. I needed some way to let out the anger. You can't let it all out in road rage.
'The accident was in June and we did our first gig in November but before that the two days before our first gig my father died. 2006 was a tough year. We did the gig because my dad was a musician. I think he would have wanted us to. He used to play double bass in dance bands.'
It was because Horn used to sometimes have to substitute for his father who was on duty as a maintenance engineer for the dairy that Horn developed as a bass player. One of his first gigs was to play on the old fashioned Come Dancing TV show.
'Just after the Wembley gig my mum died. She had a heart attack. My two sisters came over to see me play and then they went back to Canada. She had a heart attack and didn't really recover. I have to be really careful what I talk about because it upsets my children to read. They don't like to read about things too much.'
At that point, as if by twisted fate, a young man comes in and asks if we want lunch. He turns out to be the son Aaron, the one who shot the air rifle into his mother's neck. There is an atmosphere. Awful. I had thought he was waiting for her to wake up from a coma.
'No,' he shakes his head. 'It's not like that,' in a monotone. I believe he can only say it in monotone because if he injects emotion into what happened he may not be able to go on.
'There are various types of hypoxia. Hypoxia is when you get oxygen starvation to the brain. If you have three minutes of it you get permanent damage. My wife had 15 minutes. People survive after 45 minutes but the problem is because it is not caused by an injury but by a lack of blood, traumatic hypoxia is oxygen starvation to a part of your brain.
'Quite often if traumatic hypoxia happens you can recover but non-traumatic hypoxia is the worst. After a certain point there is no chance of you making any kind of a recovery. That's just the way it is. And typically your eyes are open, you have a wake sleep cycle. You don't need to be on a life support machine because your lower functions like your breathing and those kind of things still function. Your brain stem still functions, which means your eyes are open but you are…' His voice drifts off. It's as if he's suddenly come back to reality as emotion creeps into his voice and he just can't face it.
'You are just completely incommunicado. That's just the way it is,' he repeats, 'and there's really not any prospect… You know where there's life there's hope, but you know, if someone is still alive but that's about it…' He can't finish the sentence, clearly because there isn't much hope for anything to be better than it is and how it is is actually terrible.
'Well, there are worst things.' I don't know what. 'I'll tell you what. You see people whose relatives are brain damaged and every now and then every few months they'll get a flicker of something and it keeps them hoping. I think that's more of a torture. We haven't had anything for five years so in a way it's slightly more merciful.'
It's been written that she was in a coma and there was hope for her to wake up. 'No.' He shakes his head. 'She is probably similar to …' he mumbles and looks at the floor. 'What makes it so tough was that my wife was the most vibrant person around. Very forceful.'
In 1999 in an interview he said, 'Jill and I are very different. She drives fast and takes a lot of chances… One of her best qualities is she is never afraid to say what she thinks… she is always full of life.'
She was always spectacularly driven. A former maths teacher, she excelled at building her own recording studio empire. She was very together. She had everything down. 'Yes. It was like losing your everybody because we were partners. It's like we were in a band, she and I. We started this whole thing whatever it is.' He gestures to the whole of the studios and the record label that she and he had together.
'When I say she and I, she and her brother originally started it, but she and I were like a team. It's not easy when you can't commemorate her because… It's tough. I don't know how much more I can talk about it because there's nothing I can do about it.'
Pain, frustration, hopelessness is etched in the air. I tell him I don't know what to say. 'Well exactly. That's the way it generally ends up you see. The problem is if you have a birthday party and invite all her friends it doesn't work. It makes it more sad.' Because they remember her how she was yet she still is but she's not how she was? 'Exactly. It's a strange one. There's not really an easy way to deal with it and it's a particularly well trodden path.'
There are not many examples to learn from of people who are never going to recover and are brain dead but are still alive.
'It has happened to people and the funny thing is that when it first happened I used to go all the hours of the day and night to the hospital to see her and suddenly it happened to somebody else as well. A guy called Bryan Morrison. He was in the music business, famous for being Pink Floyd's publisher and he was a big polo player and it happened to him. He came off a pony head first and he was the same as my wife. Odd. We only met a year before. He has died now, long since gone. It makes you realise if you don't need a general anaesthetic best to avoid it.'
What's that got to do with it? 'Because sometimes it goes wrong and there's a lot of people who went in for simple things and that's not how it turned out. My wife's thing was caused initially by being shot by an air rifle pellet but .....'
'If I start to talk about all this stuff I'll have to leave the country. It just brings the whole thing up. All I can say is there was inadequate coverage in the emergency department.' Does he now have a phobia of hospitals? 'Anyone who has any sense has a phobia of hospitals. Good luck to you if something happens and you are on BUPA. The day after my wife's accident I started getting letters from BUPA. "Is your wife in hospital? Are they doing things to her? Because if they're not we're not paying. We don't pay for convalescence."
She is now still in hospital, a different one. 'She is in a place where she is cared for.' Can she hear music? They say that's the last to go. 'We don't know if she can hear anything because she gives no indication. She can't communicate in any way. She can only communicate discomfort like a child can communicate discomfort without saying anything. Discomfort, nothing else.'
The atmosphere is thick with pain which is why certain tracks on the album work so well as the emotion has been mined into them seamlessly. He looks to the floor again. Northern man face is on. 'I like this northern man face. I grew up with it. It also includes a kind of scepticism where certain psychiatry and psychic things are concerned.' It's a cynical face. 'Yes. It is.'
We talk more about the songs he wrote that were inspired by his wife. '"Music doesn't represent the mood. It is the mood." Debussy said that. There's a certain chord that I'm very fond of. It's something like a minor ninth.' He goes over to the piano in the corner and plays it. It's a very emotion provoking chord. I recognise it as one he has always favoured. It is as if that chord is the key to him. 'Music lets you see places. You can see places in music that don't exist in the world and you can escape to them and out of your life. That's why people like it so much.'
And he needed to escape his life? 'Four years ago, yes. I've got it in slightly better shape now than it was then. But back then it was a bit, yes... She used to complain that I never wrote any songs about her.
'Garden Of Flowers is about her too because she never liked sailing. And since the accident happened I bought a boat. Being with the band has helped. There's been male bonding. When you are married you don't need that so much.' Does he have another lady to bond with? 'Yes, I do now,' he says falteringly. He finds all this emotional stuff difficult. That's why The Producers must have been such a relief on so many levels.
'We spend a lot of time together and we have a lot of fun because we argue a lot. We don't argue in a bitter way. That's what friends are for. They are meant to tell you what they think. One of the things we've all enjoyed is just being together and making a record…
'In the 70s when I was getting into music it was a communal affair, there were a lot of people involved. In the 80s and 90s it became more insular. Now you have lots of people working in their little rooms. And just getting out of your little room and get together with your friends, it's a really nice thing to do.'
I wonder what he hears in his head. Does he think of sound in multi dimensional terms? 'I can switch a button on in my head. Most of the time it's switched off and I listen to music just the same way as you do, although maybe more jaded. But sometimes I pick up on things, an emotion, or the person, and I interpret.'
His interpretation has been so specific, so much so that if you hear the first bars of something that he's produced you know it's him. He gives me northern man face. Can't take a compliment.
In 2004 he said, 'My wife was brutally honest. She said as an artist I would have only ever been third division, and I could be the biggest producer in the world. And it was great when she said that.'
I wonder about that now. Was it really that great? It's kind of a back-handed compliment. 'What really happened was my partner Geoff Downes left and I said the good thing is you can be my manager and she said, "If I'm your manager I think you should be a producer." Before I was a producer I was a bass player. I played every night since I was 11. My father was an engineer for the dairy. We lived next door and my father was head of maintenance so he was constantly on call if the refrigeration broke down or something like that. So this meant that I was on stage playing double bass when I was 12 because I had to step in for my dad (in his band). It's a funny thing me going back to playing in a band, isn't it. Maybe if she was around she'd tell me not to do it. I don't know. I think I'm old enough to do what I want,' he says suddenly looking very schoolboy and very vulnerable.
'Do you remember the Viz comics? I grew up reading the Dandy and the Beano. I always related to Cedric Softie who was constantly bashed by Biffa Bacon. You know, a bespectacled kid among tough characters.'
You were the softie? 'Kind of.' You were beaten up? 'A couple of times. I got nutted. I always remember when we were 15 on New Year's Eve, the first time I ever had a drink, a bunch of boys pushed us against the wall, they nutted my friend and broke his nose.' In a strong Geordie accent he repeats the scene, 'Take your glasses off, we're going to break ya. I said I can't see without my glasses and somebody in the gang talked him out of it.
'My parents moved to Leicester when I was 15 but I stayed in Heddon-le-Hole in a two up two down miner's cottage with an outside toilet with my grandparents. I got to grammar school but failed most of my O levels. I got a guitar when I was 14 and I never revised, but I don't tell my children that.
'My eldest daughter and son are running a group of companies in the music business. My 22-year-old daughter is at university in America doing a BA. My youngest daughter wants to be a journalist. I feel terrible about the Syrians targeting Marie Colvin. I hope they fucking chew him (President Assad) to pieces.' He spits anger out now. I'm not sure it's all entirely directed at the president.
What makes him happy? 'I love reading. I read all the time. Ian Kershaw is brilliant, and I go out boating. I like the sea. My boat is the same size as the Thames water police. It can fit about ten people. sometimes you can go up the Solent and be the only person on the water.'
There is such a loneliness in him you feel it. He probably needs it, but in equal measure he needs the company of his band mates, his friends. They all pile in again and start arguing. Creme starts telling anecdotes from when he and his then partner Kevin Godley made Frankie Goes To Hollywood's Two Tribes video and the man making the prosthetics had a car crash with the prosthetics in it.
Lipson too first came to work with Horn on Relax. Horn says, 'Steve and I worked together for a while before I noticed him.' Lipson says, 'I ignored him. He was a successful producer. I was the wannabe. My jealousy was all consuming.' They argue about who ignored who first. Yes, like teenagers, but with an underlying affection and an inescapable bond.

The décor in Hilary Devey's central London apartment is maximalist, opulence in every nook and cranny, chandeliers and candelabras. Devey herself emerges slowly.She is tired. She's had a hard week on Dragon's Den and survives on four hours sleep a night anyway. Not that you'd know it. She is immaculately turned out.
Her vampishly dark locks are glossy and full. Her smoky-eye make-up perfect. Her eyes themselves are a sparkling blue grey. She's taller and slimmer than you expect in black leggings and a cream embroidered silk top.
She is 53 but her face looks so much fresher than on the television. 'It's been tough this week, really tough. Long days in the Den and I was absolutely exhausted. Plus these bloody doors at the BBC in Salford are so heavy I feel I'll actually have muscles by the end of it.'
If Devey admits to having a tired and stressful week it must have been really something. Her book Bold As Brass tells the story of her life; the stress and pain streams off every page. You are emotionally exhausted at the end of each chapter thinking how could one woman have gone through so much.
A childhood where she hardly went to school, worked in her parents' pubs, lost her beloved father to stomach cancer when she was 18, endured painful marriages with men who either loved her too much or not enough, one beat her up. Her only son became a heroin addict and stole from her to pay for his addiction and nearly died. And in her book she reveals for the first time that she was raped. But more of that later.
Two years ago she had a major stroke from which by sheer willpower alone it seems she has mostly recovered; except her peripheral vision has never returned and she will never drive again. One arm doesn't work properly. She can't hold the steering wheel and sometimes can't properly brush her hair.
'My brain is mush. I can't sleep if I'm not surrounded by my own familiarity' - she didn't feel comfortable in a friend's luxury apartment in Salford where Dragon is shot. One wonders if all this non-stop work for Dragon's Den and for her own company Pall-Ex that has a turnover of £100 million a year, didn't contribute to her actual stroke?
'No, not really. I did a lot of research on it myself. Children as young as six have had strokes. Stress doesn't cause a clot. I was just unlucky. I have a healthy diet, no red meat and I don't like wine I don't over indulge and I believe that hard work is good for the soul anyway. A good hard day's graft makes you feel good,' she says in her bold as brass Bolton tones.
She said that she had warning of the stroke, a terrible headache which she tried to ignore. 'I was packing for a business trip and I couldn't coordinate the packing but carried on. Then my arm went numb. The signs were there but I didn't act on them. Instead I took every conceivable headache pill and then I collapsed.'
It was her son Mevlit, 25, who lives with her on her rambling Edwardian estate near Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire, who discovered her and announced, "She's had a stroke." He'd watched the advert for it on TV.
'When I got to hospital they did a CT scan and said I'd had a very severe stroke, the magnitude was nine out of ten. The tiredness goes on for many years but I'm a fighter. I'm much better than I was. What could you do? Lay back in bed and think I am so depressed I can't move my arm?'
For Devey there's never been any lying back in bed. 'No, you just get on with it. I am fortunate that I can afford to pay somebody to help do my hair to get me ready. The unfortunates are the old people who have strokes. That's why I became patron of The Stroke Association. Once the brain is damaged there's no going back. A third of my brain was taken away. It just goes to show there's a lot of brain we never use and I found it.'
The other day on The Dragon's Den she had to calculate quickly percentages and investments 'and my brain would not multiply. It's very intense. What are your projections for first year trading? What's your margins? That sort of thing.'
Devey has never let anything stop her before. So it's frustrating if anything threatens to. This is the girl who as a child if there wasn't a horse available for her to ride she would ride a cow.
'I love animals. I prefer animals to people actually, and they are so much more economical than men. They eat what you put down for them and clean up after themselves without using any of God's resources.'
She shakes her head. 'Men are another source of exhaustion.' While she has excelled all her life at being a woman in a man's world be it serving in a pub or creating her own haulage business, nothing has fazed her. But as her mother used to say "Hilary, you are brilliant in business but you have got a lousy choice in men." It's a strange paradox that such a strong and striking woman would attract such weak men. She has been married three times.
'With business I have been brought up to take the compassion out of the commercial decision and then put the compassion back into it. It's hard to do that with men when you are feeling a bit lonely and vulnerable. Having a public profile and being at the top of your business is a very lonely place to be.'
Some men are perhaps intimidated by her. 'I have no doubt that men think of what I have achieved and that emasculates them. God only knows why. I am not powerful or strident in a relationship. I am a very traditional bird. I like cooking. I like cleaning.'
There is pain in her eyes even though they sparkle. She has suffered. Which is probably what makes her a gay icon. 'Perhaps it's because I don't care what people think of what I wear. I like shoulder pads. So what if it's OTT.'
Does she think that men always try to rein her in? 'Absolutely. Categorically.' And did she change for any man? 'No. Never.'
She was however battered down by her long-term partner Hussein, a Turkish businessman and Mevlit's father. They couldn't marry because he was already married to someone else when he moved in with her. He lied to her, juggled his time between two women, lied to everyone.
'He was very jealous. He gave me some of the happiest times of my life and some of the saddest. I did truly love him. The only problem was that he lied which turned the whole relationship into a sham.'
How could she have been with him so long and not realised? She shakes her head. 'I don't know is the answer.' At this time she was working hard but not with her own company.
'I met some interesting characters when I was setting up Pall-Ex (in 1996). Haulage is such a misogynistic world.'
She is doing another television programme about the glass ceiling that women experience. 'I don't believe we should impose quotas in the UK because I think that takes us back 25 years where we will start to discriminate against gender. What I hope to gain from this is that the government should allow more transparency during the interviewing of personnel to senior positions, such as when do you plan to have children? That way it's the business's job to strategize. We can't stop having children.
'The lady in the city who has nine children is very fortunate to have a house husband because believe me there are few of them.'
Back to emasculated men? 'They get vicious, violent, aggressive, petulant. It brings out everything bad.' She speaks of course from personal experience. 'Although I don't think he (meaning Hussein) felt emasculated by me at the time. It was just his temperament. When I look back at the life we had together we had an awful lot of stresses and strains that a young couple should not have endured.'
When she met him he was dark, tall, strong, handsome. He disappeared from her life when he could no longer possess her. It was he who was the businessman but he made some unfortunate deal and ended up trading in drugs and is currently in prison.
Her son wanted to establish some kind of relationship with him so she met him again recently - frail with only one tooth in his head. 'He is very much a different person.' She speaks of him softly and even though he was violent towards her you feel she wants to help him now.
She understands what it's like to have nothing. In her book she talks about her beloved father. He had a central heating business as well as pubs. When she was about seven the central heating business went bankrupt and the bailiffs took away all the furniture. It was at that moment that she decided that would never happen to her.
The family moved around the north of England so much 'to chase' money she went to 13 schools. She never made friends because she knew she'd leave again 'I didn't have friends because I didn't come from a home environment where I could take them back to. I went back to the pub and opened a tin of soup. I was very busy as a kid. I can honestly say I've never been bored in my life.'
From a very young age she helped her parents out or she worked on a stall. 'I did occasionally, very occasionally in my childhood, feel lonely. I never dwelt on it. I had an ability to get stuck in and I did.'
When she was able to make friends it was often a bad experiences. When she was around eight a friend's father tried to interfere with her. And years later she fell in with an older girl who lured her into a situation in which she was raped. This was extremely difficult for her to write about and before writing this book she'd never even told anyone about it.
'Don't forget I didn't actually play. I didn't go out, so I was particularly naïve. I met those girls as I sat on the steps of the pub that my parents were running and I escaped for ten minutes. I was thrilled to be talked to. They were older than me and very much older in the head. I was a tomboy and didn't care what I looked like. I used to be forced to brush my hair. I was a late developer.'
Does she think that she was susceptible because she looked innocent and that was why they procured her? 'Yes. And the worst thing was I couldn't talk about it. I didn't speak about it ever in my life. The book is the first time and the hardest thing I've done in my life. Harder than setting up Pall-Ex. Harder than seeing my son go through heroin addiction. It was a very emotional time and it drained me physically to think about it. I would never have dreamt about writing a book. I did so because somebody asked me.'
And she is the person who always says yes? 'I suppose so.'
Was it like therapy? 'No. It affected me very badly, dredging up things that I'd locked away. On reflection I didn't have a normal upbringing. Working from such a young age and kept off school to run a business. It did make me have a sense of responsibility and that stayed through every day of my life. I don't chase money, I learnt that. I didn't have a normal upbringing did I and for some reason I thought I had. I'm not a normal person, am I.' I tell her she just had some not normal things going on and normal is of course relative.
'I think the reason I got with Hussein was that my father was such a dominant figure in my life, and so was Hussein, a dominant male. A lot of women do that, gravitate towards their fathers.
'At the time I was on the corporate ladder in middle management. I was a career girl but it was because he was so strong that I gravitated towards him.'
Her father cast a long shadow. 'I remember the day he came to take me out and said, "I'm dying." I was devastated but he just got on with it. My father is like me. Take a painkiller and go. What will be will be. I am very much like him. I am my father's daughter.'
Her mother was a traditional wife and mother. 'She came from an era where a man said here's your housekeeping. When my dad died she didn't even know what a cheque book was.'
Devey thinks the kind of man that wants to look after you would never be attracted to her and never has been. 'And the other problem is I wear my heart on my sleeve. People can see from the exterior what's going on in the interior. Men would take advantage of it. And let's face it, I've got money. I'm an easy lifestyle, aren't I? Not that I will let that happen again.'
She's visibly agitated about men who have done that. She married her first husband Malcolm Sharples when she was much too young - 18 - and he was not strong enough for her. Her father had always known this and begged her not to marry him.
Then she fell in love with Hussein and after that when she was lonely married Ed Devey. 'Hussein at least didn't want me for money. Undoubtedly he loved me. Perhaps he loved me too much. Subsequently men have loved the money too much.'
Last year she married former pub boss Philip Childs. They met when he was helping to renovate her property in Spain. She says this too 'has gone down the pan.' In her book she explains that she didn't realise 'you both come with a lot of baggage when you get married in middle age… It's sometimes hard to work through all of that.' Today she says, 'We are taking one day at a time.'
Downstairs her two teacup yorkies that she calls 'the babies' are sleeping, tired out from an earlier barking session. Her son had a dog which ended up eating most of the flat she had rented him. 'In fact not just the flat, the entire building. But it was the four ducks that he had in Spain when he was 17 that did the worst damage. He got them as ducklings but they grew into these huge great things. He won them and he kept them in a paddling pool inside the villa. Then I got called by a lady who went in to maintain the villa telling me I needed to fumigate. The ducks had crapped all over a new leather lavender sofa and half eaten everywhere.
'The ducks were a protected species and I had to leave them in the paddling pool until I got permission to take them to a lake.' She doesn't blame her son. She says simply, 'Horses, dogs, I've had every misfit in the world. I've ended up with this horse who is now 27 and he will not come out of his stable until he has had a bacon and ham sandwich. He also likes a cup of tea.'
She also has other horses because she used to love to ride. She doesn't think she'll be able to again.
She smokes a cigarette, her only addiction. She says she has never been addicted to alcohol or food and certainly not drugs. Her son started displaying addictive behaviour as a child when he couldn't stop eating. She would send him off to fat camp. He would come back normal and then balloon up. He was dyslexic and she thought he would get better attention at a boarding school especially for dyslexics. It was at this school that he played her for money and started using drugs.
'It was a journey into the abyss. The only time in my life I'd been prescribed anti-depressants. My nature is if there's a problem, I'll solve it. I couldn't solve this. Every time he went into rehab I thought we could move on, but it didn't work like that. He had to be ready.
'The amount of times I've manhandled him. He's 6' 3" and four times the weight of me. I've dragged him back, kicked him in the car, put the locks down and forced him into rehab. Fighting to save his life was the hardest thing.'
She feels guilty that he got into drugs in the first place. She was a single mother running her business but feels guilty for her success. 'I do. I think any mother would. I kept thinking if only I had not started Pall-Ex.
'When he was 14 or 15 he would say he was doing archery at school, swimming, or he needed money for hockey. "We're gong to Snowdonia tonight," whatever. So I gave him money and he was buying drugs with it. But if I had not been as busy building a business would I not have been more questioning of that?' She shakes her head.
'I wanted my child to have the things I never had.' A small compensation is that this school has now been closed down because of its widespread number of drug users.
'I could see him getting in with the wrong crowd but I couldn't stop it. Yes, he should have gone to a school that specialised in dyslexia. He's mastered it to a degree. He can now read but he was led down the path of drugs because of his dyslexia and his weight problem, he was lonely. I make sensible food. I've never craved food in my life. When he came off heroin he craved food. There have been times in my life where I've had to put padlocks on the fridge.'
Does she think she will ever get married again? 'No, and you can print that emphatically. Never, ever, ever.' She doesn't think she could ever fall in love again.
A few days after our chat she went to Marrakesh where she has rescued a couple of dogs and has a lovely home. She also has a place in Florida which she is renovating. She still has Spain 'but it doesn't hold good memories for me.'
She loves doing up houses. She loves her maximalist style. When I tell her I have a lampshade made out of a corset her eyes ignite. That would work for her. 'I love textiles and I have a passion for fashion. I'd love to bring back some of the textile industry to Britain if it was commercially viable.'
She is very open about her passions and her pain. You can look at her and see inside her. Yes, she's had botox once, it didn't make any difference. No, she wouldn't consider cosmetic surgery because she's worried general anaesthetic would bring on another stroke. Yes, she has microdermabrasions. Yes, she has hair extensions.
'Do you know what. I had eyelash extensions for a while and every time one came off I would go back, can you fix it? By the end of it I had to take them all out because my eyelashes had all gone. I had bald patches on my eyelashes.'
She looks super glamorous and feminine yet 'I'm excellent at reading maps. Hence the reason I set up my business and it did very well.' She's very good at being in a man's world. Men she works with admire her. I don't like to think of her without hope of a happy life with a man. 'No, I don't like cynicism either,' she says. She tells me about a man who tapped at the window of her Rolls Royce the other day. 'He wanted £80 to get back to Scotland and his wallet and mobile phone had been stolen.' I told her she was being played. She said she gave it to him happily on the grounds it would change his life but not hers.
'Hopefully when this article is printed the man will get in contact and say I was the man she gave the £80 to and I was genuine.' She's right. Cynicism is not an attractive trait and she has none whatsoever.

Sir Patrick Moore is a cat man. He's just written his first cat book - Miaow! Cats Really Are Nicer Than People - and it's all about the cats he has loved throughout his life and features mostly his two most recent cats Ptolemy and Jeannie.
The notice on the porch of his 15th Century cottage in Selsey, West Sussex says 'This house is maintained entirely for the convenience of our cat'. And he believes that. Once inside every possible crevice and wall space has either a photograph of a cat or a watercolour of a Martian painted by his late mother Gertrude. There is cricket memorabilia and pictures of him with his mother, pictures of him in cricket whites about to bowl. Endless books. And the chairs he sat on as a child. Has he ever thrown anything away? 'One of my ancestors was a squirrel.'
Moore himself is wearing a brightly coloured Hawaiian style shirt with planets and stars emblazoned on it. He is squeezed into an uncomfortable looking chair in front of the desk he was given for his eighth birthday. Besides him sits Ptolemy, a fluffy black cat with green saucer-sized eyes and a bushy tail.
They both give a similar miaow hello. 'I speak elementary cat,' he says in his clipped 1940s movie style voice. He tells me, 'A friend of ours had a cat and the cat had kittens and he brought this little black one over to see me. I heard every word that kitten was saying. He said, "I want to be here. I want to be your cat. I want this to be your home. Please take me." And I said, "Your name is Ptolemy." Every black cat in my family has been called Ptolemy.'
Ptolemy was a Greek astronomer who lived around AD 120 and wrote the Almagest. He lived in Egypt where cats were sacred, but the name was chosen for quite a different reason.
'My uncle Reg was a barrister who gave up the law and became a well-known comic actor in the D'Oyly Carte opera company. One of his first roles was one of Ptolemy in a show called Amasis. His parents had just acquired a black kitten so they called him after the character Reg was playing.'
Ptolemy has a loud purr and a very thick coat. He has his own special cat garden with a chicken write roof so that he is safe from the foxes and wandering on to the road.
Sir Patrick Moore himself is in no danger of wandering anywhere. He has two full-time carers, one day, one night. He is wheelchair bound and doesn't get out very much at all. He can no longer make it to his garden observatory. His hands are puffy and smooth with arthritis and he can no longer operate the telescope.
Beside him is an old-fashioned typewriter that looks as old as he is (89). 'I used to be able to type on it 90 words a minute with two fingers, but not any more.' He can just about hold his coffee cup.
He tries not to feel broken about this. He tries to keep as busy as he can without being able to move. The Sky At Night is in its 55th year and recently its anniversary programme was shot with him at his old desk.
'Cuckoo,' says the cuckoo clock. 'The BBC stopped it when they were filming, so the time is wrong. I was given that clock for my sixth birthday. I said I would dearly love a cuckoo clock and my mother got that one for me. '
The title of the book Cats Really Are Nicer Than People says everything about his relationships with humans and hints at the deep scars of disappointment and bereavement he's suffered through his life.
Born in 1923, an only child to a soldier whose lungs had been filled with gas in the First World War and a trained opera singer who liked the stars, the planets and art - he had a heart condition which meant he was home schooled. He spent a lot of time on his own not moving around much. His brain could always go up to the galaxies and around the universe while his body had been limited.
When he was six he had an adult reading age and read his mother's copy of G.F.Chambers' The Story of the Solar System, and that book led him into a life with the stars. He points to it, a volume nestled among hundreds of others on his bookshelves. In so doing he takes his monocle out of his eye. I'd read it had to be glued there because he couldn't use his hands properly, but there seems fortunately no evidence of that today.
I wondered if being an only child might have meant he didn't relate to people his own age and preferred the company of animals. I wonder if he was missing the basic play instinct? Only children in particular like to have time alone, time to observe, time to explore, which is exactly what cats do. 'Yes, maybe,' he nods. It seems though cats in fact were more the link to all things earthbound.
Jeannie, a black and white fluffy cat with a beautiful face, features in photographs in picture frames all over his desk, his shelves and on the wall. She stares, she stretches, she sleeps, she cuddles.
'Jeannie,' he says, 'was particularly sociable. She liked to be with people. She is a Norwegian forest cat. They are known for that. She wouldn't hurt anything. She brought in a field mouse once, totally unharmed, and dumped it in the hall. We finally got it into a box full of straw and returned it to the wild. She just wanted to play with it. She was such a playful cat.'
Just after he finished writing the book, Jeannie was taken ill. It was kidney failure. 'It was an awful shock. We did everything we could, but there it was. The vet said we can't cure this and if we try to keep her going she may suffer. It was awful. I miss her terribly. I miss her now.'
Sometimes he can't believe she's gone and he talks as if he still has her. The book is dedicated to her. In it he says, 'Some people may not understand how it is possible to have such a deep love for a little cat, but my love for Jeannie went very deep indeed. When I held her for the last time and kissed her I did not say goodbye Jeannie because I know she will wait for me and I will see her again. So instead I said "Au revoir Jeannie dear, until we next meet."'
He talks of death quite matter of factly. 'I'm not afraid of it. It's natural.' He talks of the party he will have, not a funeral. 'My good bits and pieces will be donated to medical science. The rest they can chuck away.'
He says the party will feature a candle and a taped message. They will light the candle and the recording will say "I will blow out that candle if it kills me, ha, ha."
For one who has suffered so much he is surprisingly light-hearted. He tells me that Ptolemy liked to sleep on the fax machine. 'I got a call from Australia with someone saying I'm trying to send you fax, you need to take your cat off the fax machine.' They knew him well enough to know that was why the fax couldn't go through.
It took him ten years to write Data Book of Astronomy, an enormous compendium - charts, maps, words, everything about the cosmos. One draft he says got a very 'bad review. Ptolemy, who is an exceptionally clean cat, just look at him, once and only once decided not to go outside but showed me what he thought of my draft. I had to write it all again. I think he was telling me I need to do better.' He chuckles. He exudes a kind of sweetness that is rare in a human. He is very gentlemanly.
Cricket is another great love. He was a spin bowler. He points to his cricket bat, which looks ancient, and stand among ornaments and trinkets from all over the world. He must miss playing it terribly?
'I do. And I miss Jeannie. She had a long and happy life and I had a happy life. And I still have Ptolemy. He sleeps with me. I like to wake up to the sound of purr in my ear. It's such a comforting sound.
'My cats have always slept with me, or sometimes my mother when she was here. She lived with me here until she died (at 94 in 1981).' He sighs, 'I was 22 when my girl was killed. I knew there would be no one else. I was close to my mother and she was to me. So why should we split up. We never did.' His girlfriend Lorna was a nurse in London in the war. They were together for three years when one of Hitler's bombs killed her in an air raid.
He was a young and handsome man. There are pictures of him in his air force uniform looking slim, toned, handsome, with piercing kind eyes. Didn't he want to find love again? 'No, no way,' he says with all the energy in his being. A long pause. 'She was the only one for me. I knew that. Of course I would have liked a family. I'd have liked it to have been another way. But that was how it was.'
He felt he could not replace her and says that he still thinks of her. 'Sometimes half an hour might pass when I don't think of her.' Does he feel his cats have been his girlfriends? 'Yes. Whenever I've come home my cats were always there to welcome me. They have all been exceptional cats. My mother was equally fond of cats. We had a lot in common.
'Before the First World War she went to Italy to train as an opera singer. Then the war broke out and she married my father. I had a nice voice as a boy but when it broke it shattered. But I also have a love of music.'
He looks at his hands. He doesn't have to say it but he's thinking how much he misses playing the piano and the xylophone.
Amid the cat ornaments and the cricket memorabilia are two glass penguins. When I tell him I like penguins he asks his carer to find the CD with the music he composed called Penguin Parade. It's a jaunty, happy piece. It skips and it shuffles along like a penguin and when we have finished listening to it there's a tear in his eye, I suppose for what's gone and can't be recaptured.
He tells me 'Chester Zoo commissioned it to be played at their penguin enclosure.' He doesn't know when. Time seems to be mixed up in his head.
He was 16 when the war broke out. Lied about his age. Why did he do that?
He laughs at me. 'I didn't want to stay at home if everyone else was going off to fight. I knew I couldn't join the army or navy because they had a higher medical standard.'
Did he join the air force because if he'd be called up he would have been sent into the army? 'No, they would never have passed me, and I wasn't going to stay at home. I had the wrong kind of heart.'
That was very brave. He shrugs 'Everyone was doing it.' Was he not afraid? 'We all were, but we just did it. I had to find my way in and there it was. And now we're trying to make friends with the Germans again,' he says horrified. In the war his plane crashed. His teeth were broken and he injured his back.
'I got my spine smashed and that's why I'm like this now, otherwise I'd be playing cricket. I miss my cricket. I miss my music. Until recently I could type on that machine I've had all my life. Now I dictate. It could have happened years ago. I'm lucky that I lasted as long. I'm not looking at many years left, am it? I feel glad I've been able to do most of what I've done.
'There was a time in my life in the war where I was flying so much I didn't know what it was like to be on the ground. I would love to fly again. I would love to go to New Zealand.'
I tell him that Air New Zealand have a scheme where you can take you cat as an emotional companion. Perhaps he could go? He shakes his head. 'I would love to but I couldn't.'
Dawn his carer comes in with a round of cheese and tuna sandwiches and some Pringles. He pushes more Pringles my way and wants to know where Ptolemy. He worries if he's out of sight. 'He likes computers. He's a very clever cat. He can't type although he thinks he can.'
In the book he talks about when Jeannie got up into the attic and almost fell into a space between the walls of the house. He said he would have knocked the 15th century wall down to get her out. 'She was terrified poor thing.' Another time when he thought she was stuck up a tree 'I called the fire brigade but they rescued a squirrel. She was in the airing cupboard,' he chuckles.
He talks about his cats with more pride than is possible. When he was setting up the planetarium in Northern Ireland, Smudgie, a stray black cat with white paws, adopted him. He lived till he was over 20. Before Smudgie there was Rufus, a ginger.
'I have loved all my cats. Of course cats are nicer than people. Just look around the mess we have made of our world. I have never met a cat I didn't like. They all give me affection. As for people, I think we're a mixed lot.'
Would I like a chocolate? He has a large box of Milk Tray on top of a table to the side of him. He struggles with all his might to lift the lid from the box so he can offer one to me. 'Take two.'
He has met the first man in the moon, Neil Armstrong, the first man in space Yuri Gagarin, and the first airman, Orville Wright. He is probably the only man to do so, and indeed the only man to do many things.
His programme Sky At Night has inspired millions and it is the longest running TV show, first aired in 1957. He has only missed one episode when he was in hospital with salmonella. He counts Brian May from Queen, also an astrophysicist, as one of his friends. 'I dragged him back into science.' They wrote a book Bang! together. But he's most proud of his relationships with cats and what they have taught him. He doesn't know if at this age he'll have another cat.
He is a supporter of Cats Protection and he's chairman of his local branch. 'I fear if I go there I'll come back with a cargo of cats and I don't think Ptolemy would like it.'
He is cat-like in that he likes to be awake at night. 'I've never needed much sleep ever since I was a boy and I was a night flyer in the war.' He rolls his eyes skywards. 'I've got very good vision for a man in his ninetieth year. I've got things to finish. Being busy makes me happy. I can go out, but this wheelchair is a damned nuisance. I'm not happy about it at all, but you have to be philosophical, don't you?'
Has he always been an optimist? 'I hope so. In 50 years time the world won't be like it is now. It will either be much better or much worse, but it won't be the same. I won't see it. I might get another ten years. But I don't think it will be any more.'
He's gazed into eternity. Does he believe there's an afterlife? 'Oh, I think so.'
His mother, all her life, drew pictures of Martians and flying saucers. Has he ever seen any? 'I was in my observatory and I saw three flying saucers across the moon coming towards me and then they disappeared to the other side. I finally worked out what I had seen - pollen! That said, I'm sure there's plenty of life in the universe. The number of earths are innumerably large and I refuse to believe we are the only habitable world. Either we are too far away or they have decided they don't like the look of us.'
We talk about planet cat. How much nicer it would be. 'Ptolemy and Jeannie both taught me patience and tolerance. They are both such affectionate cats. They helped me be more affectionate with people. If they can try, I can.'
In the ground floor bedroom there's an oil painting of Jeannie over the bed and a life-sized photograph of Ptolemy and Jeannie together. Dawn tells me she's only just been able to put that back up and it's been too upsetting for him to see her. She died only a month ago.
I wander past the dark oak dining table, up the creaky stairs to the bathroom. I pass many more of his mother's watercolours of Martians and endless books about the planets. He is an entirely self-taught astronomer. He had a place at Cambridge after the war but didn't want to take it up because he didn't believe in government grants.
Upstairs I thought I saw a ghost. He says nothing. I tell him it was a woman, it might be his mother. He says, 'It was probably Claude (a male ghost he has given a name). I also see the first Ptolemy, a cat ghost. Why would I be afraid?'
For one moment it seems like he's ready to reach over, to join them, his girl, his cats. Does he believe that perhaps he'll come back as a cat? 'Miaow!' he says, with a grin and a bright light in his eyes.

* Money raised from Miaow! Cats Really Are Nicer Than People will be donated to Cats Protection. (Published by Hubble & Hattie on April 20 2012, £7.99. Visit www.hubbleandhattie.com).

I first met Eve Hewson a few years back. Or at lest she slunk by me when I was having dinner at her parents', Bono and Ali Hewson's lovely home in Dalkey, South Dublin.
It was a high-spirited affair and we were around a big table in the kitchen. Eve came in the back door and disappeared straight to her bedroom. Ali announced deadpan, 'She wants to be an actress. We're very worried.'
The next time I see her it's on screen as a full-on punkish goth girl in This Must Be The Place who is the loyal friend of eccentric older goth former rock star played by multi-Oscar nominated Sean Penn.
Penn's performance is a little bit Robert Smith from The Cure, a little bit Andy Warhol. Eve's character is knowing and non-judgmental. The performances are incredibly articulate, the movie quirky and standout.
We meet in a cool Japanese restaurant in Studio City, Los Angeles. Eve is staying there with her long-standing American boyfriend, One Tree Hill star James Lafferty, en route to the Sundance Film Festival. The rest of her time she is in NYC studying theatre and child psychology.
Interesting mix. Children of famous parents are often troubled. Perhaps they feel they'll never be as good as their parents. Or perhaps are doomed because they feel over entitled. Eve has none of that. She's straight up, focused, shy but ready to go for it.
'I had an amazing childhood,' she says as we order spicy tuna on crispy fried rice. She doesn't look gothic like the movie. Her hair is mid-brown with a pale pink Irish rose complexion. She has full pillowy lips and huge expressive eyes which seem to miss nothing. She is wearing a red and navy striped top, knit shorts in a crazy pattern - grey, white yellow - black tights, biker style boots and yellow leopard scarf. Her clothes are loud but practical, her manner understated.
Bono and Ali Hewson have always said they never spoilt their children. They were always too aware of the pitfalls of the children of celebrities. They did a good job in keeping things grounded.
'I had a really solid upbringing. My childhood friends were nuts. We ran around in costumes making crazy home videos. We lived a fairytale.'
She confirms it's true her parents are still slightly worried and certainly didn't push for this career choice, but being in a movie with Sean Penn has certainly helped dissolve their fears.
'I worked really hard on the audition and I waited and waited, no one was getting back to me until one morning I was sleeping till noon and I had all these messages from my agent and my mum. My mum was so excited when I got this part. I think that was the breakthrough point. A movie with Sean Penn - things might work out.
'It's an awful profession. I don't know how people survive it. They might lose their minds along the way but for some reason everyone wants to do it,' she says with a knowing little laugh. She comes over very old soul, wise for her 20 years.
Before the movie with Sean Penn and Frances McDormand, who plays his understanding wife, she was in a video about an Irish girl pining for home (The Script's For The First Time) and a movie, The 27 Club, shot in South Carolina. It was about a grieving messed up rock star who goes on a trans-American trip.
'It was a road movie and I played a hitchhiker in it. And that's when I thought, my God, I never want to stop doing this. I just love it. I think I'm an introverted extrovert. I only like attention when I don't deserve it.
'On birthdays when I was younger I used to cry. If people gave me presents I would say why. There is such a pressure to enjoy your birthday that I would always be hiding in my room crying.'
Growing up there must have been some famous actors popping by? 'Yeh, there were a few people,' she says. 'Don't know exactly who. I do remember Robbie Williams coming to stay at our house because that was a really big deal and I was eight and obsessed with him.'
He was staying at a little annex to the house called The Folly built later than the original Georgian house. 'I was supposed to run down and tell him lunch was ready. I was so excited I ran so fast down the steps I didn't see him coming. I ran smack into his crotch. I thought it was so funny I told everyone for a year that I ran into Robbie Williams' family jewels.'
The Folly has hosted the world's luminaries and everyone that's stayed there signs the bathroom wall. I remember seeing Bill Clinton's signature. 'I used to have sleepovers when I was ten or 11. It was my favourite thing to do. We would watch The Deep Blue Sea over and over again, a film about sharks, and my friends would sign the wall with hearts and stars and little drawings.' Presidents and schoolgirls elevated alike.
How does she think her parents have influenced her? 'One thing I like about my parents is they've kept their childhood friends. They all support each other, which I think is telling of their character. I want to keep all of my same friends. My roommate in New York has been my friend since I was four. My sister Jordan is also in New York, studying at Columbia, French and Politics. We are yang and yang. She's the uptown girl, I'm the downtown girl.'
She says she's tortured by the audition process. 'One day I'll do a great audition and have a sense of euphoria and think I can do this forever. Then I'll have the worst audition and think why am I doing this.'
Her performance in This Will Be The Place has been praised. She is subtle, talented, and something about her face is luminous on screen.
Does she think that having parents as famous as hers opens doors, or is it a double-edged sword? 'It is absolutely. I'd never complain. I've been lucky. We were able to travel the world and meet amazing people. Opportunities wouldn't come as easily for me if I weren't in that position. But I've way more to prove, which is fine. I'll just work hard and it will all be okay in the end. It boxes you in and I don't want to be in a box. Sometimes casting directors don't care and sometimes it's the only thing they care about. It's the same with friends. Sometimes it's easier to make friends but you can soon tell if they're friends with you because of who your parents are or whether they are just your friends. It's easy to decipher the difference.'
Does she dread being asked over and over again what was it like having Bono as your dad? 'It's an awful question because I don't know the difference. I don't know any other dad. Obviously I've been very lucky but It's not something for me to get caught up in. it's not going to define who I am for the rest of my life. So what, who cares?'
She met her boyfriend James Lafferty in North Carolina when they both did The 27 Club. I've read that it's been a stormy relationship. That they broke up and got back together many times. 'No. All lies. I think people at magazines get bored and make things up. I don't know what goes on in those offices but it's let's put their names in the title and see what happens.' In fact she's been solidly with him for three and a half years.
She smiles brightly at the sound of his name but she is 20 years old, shouldn't she be having lots of boyfriends? 'No, I don't want to. My parents met when they were 12 and started dating when they were 15, so I don't see anything wrong with being with someone your entire life.'
She says many times how lucky she is. Lucky to have her parents. Lucky to be in love. Lucky to have had this movie. Lucky that it was shot in the summer so she didn't have to take a semester off college.
'I hadn't met any of the actors before, but Frances McDormand was one of my favourite actors ever. She's such a cool woman. And Sean Penn, he's hilarious. We met for the first time in full costume together. He said, 'Hi, I like your nose ring." I said thanks. He said, "Is it real?" and I said no. I said I like your earring. He said "Thanks." Is it real? He said no. It was a cute meeting.
'I really loved playing Mary because she isn't cute or sweet. Countless auditions have gone on where they describe the character,' she puts on an American accent, 'Sarah, 16, cute. And you think here's a demand for a mindless chick. This character was not just the friend, she had her own story going on and it was such a confidence boost for a young actress.'
She describes her style as a mix between New York theatre student and stay cat. 'I never want to be polished, prim or proper. I'm ready for business and also addicted to sparkles and sequins.'
Until she finishes school she'll remain in New York where she does yoga and boxing, and get home to Ireland as much as she can. Have her parents stopped worrying yet? 'They're parents. They'll be fine. Sometimes a parent can be too supportive and convince a child they're the next best thing. That can really screw with a person's head because they'll think that everything is going to work out for them and it won't. Mine have given me a sense of reality thank God.'

The room is filled with love and awe for Julian Ovenden - he's just performed songs from his album If You Stay. It's the kind of easy listening that demands attention.
His voice pierces your heart. We are in the ballroom of a stylish Knightsbridge hotel.
We know Ovenden mostly from the long running series Foyle's War where he plays the handsome pilot son of Michael Kitchen's Foyle. He has also starred in The Forsyte Saga, been a steamy Diet Coke man, and appeared in various Broadway and West End productions, most recently in 2008 opposite Ruthie Henshall in Marguerite.
But who knew of his vast charisma and the way he has taken songs from the Sixties and made them so strikingly different? When he sings You Made Me So Very Happy it is with a brooding and demanding machismo. When you think of the theme tune to the Thomas Crown Affair - Windmills of your Mind - think of Steve McQueen himself if he were singing it. This is a voice of a man who has been wounded but who can take care of things.
Yet his life doesn't appear to have been a struggle at all. He is the son of Canon John Ovenden, the chaplain to the Queen. His life has been charmed with a scholarship to St. Paul's as a chorister and then a scholarship to Eton and Oxford.
When we meet for tea and scones at the Fortnum's café I am faced with intelligence, charm and humility - no sense of entitlement.
The album If You Stay is not out until April 23 but feedback from those in the industry who have heard it has been encouraging. So much so that when Foyle's War returns to TV screens it probably will be without Ovenden.
Imagine a more manly Michael Bublé, a more melodic Dean Martin. Imagine songs that are known to be soft and Sixties suddenly given muscle and power.
'Easy listening is a term that is often used incorrectly. It's not the music you hear in a lift or something that you can drive to or eat to. It's music that can be both foreground and background. I want this music to add to what you're doing, not just blend into it.
'It seems a contradiction in terms to be saying that I've been pushing the boundaries of easy listening, but we've been amazingly experimental. It's music from the classic era. Tunes that are traditionally gentle, but we've not made them vanilla. I want to get the passion across. I feel it's about being the gentleman of song. You listen to those singers of the sixties and there's something about them that makes you stop in your tracks. For instance the song If You Go Away. There's something emotionally captivating about that song. And there's a depth to this material which might not be there generally in today's pop music. You can sing these songs with unashamed, unapologetic emotion.'
One wonders about this Old Etonian going against the emotional grain. Is he good at expressing emotion? Or perhaps he needs these songs as the vehicle to do it?
'Good question. I think I've got better at it. But going through the education system I went through - I don't think you can go to boarding school and come out of that experience without feeling a little repressed - yes, it does leave its mark on you. That's why I got into acting: the only occasion I could meet girls. Going to drama school knocked some corners off me and definitely makes you much more expressive. You have to be as an actor and musician that's your lifeblood.'
In person Ovenden has a hint of vulnerability, but only a hint. A perfectly chiselled jaw line and a warm rich voice. He is 35. His good skin makes him look younger but when he talks he seems older and wiser.
'I don't think I was necessarily shy or needed to sublimate myself into a character to deal with my emotions, I just felt the opportunity was there and I didn't have the tools to go about approaching girls and talking to them. Also I think in my generation it was different. Guys these days are now invited to show their feelings more. It's not so much of a big deal to cry in public. It's more accepted. Twenty years ago you would have found no one doing it. Now we are encouraged to be in touch with our feminine side, including to the point of actually being apologetic about our masculine side.'
His album of 1960s songs has come together to address a need in him to present the masculine. Some of them are Rat Pack songs that could have been sung by the ultimate hard man who could embrace sentimentality - Frank Sinatra.
Easy listening shouldn't be passive listening. 'It is possible to be romantic, show passion for the material but be at the same time have machismo and the old school glamour of Cary Grant. I like to think of the music as Technicolor, trying to seduce the audience.'
We talk about the kind of films from that era that he likes, which seem to involve the macho hero type like Sinatra and McQueen. 'The kind of guys who are not afraid of being guys. And that doesn't mean to say they were chauvinistic or sexist. They were just guys and that's certainly part of the music.' They chose to record the album in the studio in New York where murdered rapper Tupac Shakur used to record which seems to have given it a grittier harder edge.
Nothing about Ovenden is predictable or clichéd. He insists that he is not posh and his parents were not posh despite his St. Paul's, Eton, Oxford education.
'I wasn't aware of class until I got to Eton and then it becomes more apparent about status and wealth I suppose is what it comes down to. There were lords, earls, dukes and princes, but because my father was a vicar you sort of defy a class label. My parents were never pushy, never ever. They wanted to give me the best education I could get and I showed musical inclination so they helped me pursue that avenue. I got a scholarship to choir school at St. Paul's and a scholarship to Eton.'
When he was growing up his father may indeed have been just a vicar. For most of his life his father was based in Primrose Hill, but in 1996 he became the royals' vicar. His father had to audition for the job of chaplain to the Queen.
'They fly people to Balmoral to spend a weekend with the Queen so that she has a chance to get to know them and make some kind of decision. They were due to fly up and a week half earlier Diana died. My parents assumed they were going to be cancelled, but they were not. They were phoned to say it was going ahead.
'When they got up there it was the week that the whole royal family were congregated. They were party to an extraordinary weekend. Years later when I was working in New York I took them to the cinema, which they hadn't been to in about 30 years, to watch The Queen with Helen Mirren. There's a scene in it where it was that weekend in Balmoral where Tony Blair is on the phone saying they should lower the flag and they were sitting around the lunch table. My mother turned to me and said, "I don't know who researched this film but we didn't have chicken, we had salmon."'
Are his parents very friendly with the royal family? Hesitantly he says, 'They are careful about mentioning them.' He had spoken in an earlier interview about meeting the Queen Mother when he wanted to do some research on Noel Coward. The family's home adjoined the church at Windsor so he was able to pop by for a gin and tonic which he had to mix and couldn't decide which of the 70 different size tumblers would be the right ones. The Queen Mother had said, "By the way, you know Coward was a spy, don't you. Oops!"
The royals come over at Christmas for mince pies and turn up in mufti. 'Slightly more relaxed and off duty than would normally be seen. In my experience the Queen is very nice.'
In September his father retires. 'He's had enough of working on Sundays and he deserves a rest. I don't go to church regularly. I wouldn't say I was religious but more spiritual.'
He is married to opera singer Kate Royal (no relation to royal Kate). They met in a bar at Glyndebourne, exchanged numbers and didn't see each other for a year. Royal had seen him in his Diet Coke ad and had a crush on him. Then serendipitously they both happened to be in New York and they met up again.
'We properly got together in New York. One of the first things she invited me to was a rehearsal of a piece of work she was doing for Paul McCartney at Carnegie Hall. I remember sitting in the rehearsal next to Paul McCartney and listening to her sing and thinking there is something special going on here. With her voice and with her.
'You get a lot of information about people from their voice. I saw in her something that I hadn't heard before. I knew then it was special, even though we'd seen each other only a few times. The mask dropped and it was somewhat exciting.'
Much more intimate to be invited to a rehearsal and sit next to McCartney than go to a performance? 'Yes, I agree. He asked me what I thought of the work and of her. He knew something was kind of going on. He was interested to know what I was thinking.
'We've been together ever since. Lots of different places and weird configurations of dogs and children.' He has Audrey, four months, and Johnny Beau, two and a half.
'Johnny Beau was born when I was doing Annie Get Your Gun in the West End. His birth was in the morning and I did the show in the evening, but it may not have worked out like that, and we did have images of me striding into King's College Hospital in my chaps and Stetson.'
It wasn't until after the birth of Johnny Beau that they got married at the end of 2009. It was a white wedding - it snowed. 'We had a wedding and a christening at the same time and my father did the ceremony. My father didn't mind us having a baby first. He's very liberal. He was one of the first people to support women priests, gay priests and he's very inter-faith, very relaxed. He has no problem marrying people who have been divorced. He's a groovy vicar.' Proof perhaps that our Queen is groovier than we might imagine.
Royal, who has long dark hair and classic good looks discovered that hormones flooding her body as she breast fed subtly altered her voice. She took a few months off after having her second child Audrey but is returning to work. An opera star's diary is booked years in advance and for the rest of this year she will be in Berlin, Salzburg, Amsterdam and have two months at the Met in New York. Does he worry about periods of separation?
'It takes a lot of organisation for us to all get together. For long trips like New York she'll take the kids. For the others she will leave them here. We will manage and that's where the wonders of Skype comes into play.'
He doesn't complain. It's not in his nature. He may do a small tour with his album and he is in talks with Harvey Weinstein about a musical version of Finding Neverland. He has been careful not to organise too much.
'When I was a chorister you were singing every day. You just did it and you did it to a high standard. I became a chorister when I was seven. It was a very structured life. Some people get completely put off singing but I found that I loved it.
'I don't want to be seen as someone doing this in my spare time. It's different when you're doing all of these things - acting, musicals, then bring out an album. Not many people have done that. Anthony Newley, Barbra Streisand?' There's a sense of trepidation in his voice when he says this, but there shouldn't be, he's a one-off.
* If You Stay is released April 23.

Susan Sarandon has never become a homogenised version of herself. She's never let herself be dull or diluted.
In her latest movie Jeff, Who Lives At Home, she plays the uptight mother of two very different and equally annoying sons played by Jason Segel and Ed Helms.
What you notice is she's not afraid to let the camera come in at an extreme close-up. The whole screen takes in her face and you are devoured in it. You think there's something defiant about this, you see bravery, you see good skin, lined yes, but you don't notice that. You notice a commanding presence.
Her face itself is incredible. Unbelievably she's 65. She's not had botox or eye lifts. She had lypo on her jaw some time ago, but her face is as vibrant as it was 20, 30 or even 40 years ago. She's not afraid to let you see all the emotions flash through it.
When we meet I am struck by how dainty she is. She is wearing dark navy skinny jeans, a lose silky creamy top, no shoes and a shiny scarlet pedicure. Her hair in chestnut waves floats beyond her shoulders and her eyes are orbital and exactly the same colour as her hair.
She has a gravelly purr when she speaks. She hasn't yet seen the movie or her impressive close-up yet. She puts her relaxed screen presence down to how much she enjoyed working with the Duplass brothers, (directors Jay and Mark) who work largely from improvisation, something which she enjoys because it keeps her on her toes.
'They don't set up a long shot or a medium shot. They don't say these are your close-ups so you are not even aware of them. There's not a self-consciousness or a loneliness. Whenever I'm in a close-up single (she means close-ups taken after the scene) I'm thinking where is the other person.
'They use more than one camera. Jay operates one and Mark watches the monitor. Mark is a little more outgoing in terms of his notes. Both my boys came to visit me and immediately hit it off with both of them.' By her boys she means her sons Jack Henry, 22, and Miles, 19.
She has an extremely close relationship with all of her children. She has always been interested in them. She told me once that they came out of her womb exactly how they are. Jack was very loud and came out quickly, 'he is a people person, whereas Miles is more like me. My daughter (Eva, 27) could have been an alien she was such a strong presence.' She told me then in her house there were no followers, only leaders.
'Jay ended up being a great mentor to my son Jack Henry when he was at USC. He looked at his film and was inspirational.'
Jack Henry and Miles still have a space in the family home, but they are not like Jeff in the movie, who lives in the basement smoking weed and in his basketball shorts.
The movie takes place all in one day where Jeff/Segel looks for a sign that might change his life and make his life mean something. He doesn't connect with his mother or his older brother Pat played by Ed Helms, who feels his life will mean something now that he's bought a Porsche that he can't afford.
'Jack Henry got a job making a documentary going across country looking at the different demographics of homeless people.' Jack Henry seems already politically aware like his parents. 'At the moment he's in New Orleans (where Jeff was shot) and coincidentally Tim (Robbins) is directing TV series Treme there. He'll be back in New York with me when he finishes that, probably for the summer.
'Tim had a house in New Orleans even before we split. Miles (her other son) is at Brown but comes back to New York to DJ in the city. 'It's not an empty nest. My kids are still in the basement,' she says with a mixture of relief and pride.
She can say the name Tim Robbins without any emotional resonance or weirdness. It is two and a half years since they split after being together for 21 years after they met on the set of the movie Bill Durham. Sarandon was 40 when she got that part of a sexy intellectual baseball groupie. She's never allowed herself to be labelled too young for this, too old for that. She played her first mother when she was 31 in Pretty Baby directed by Louis Malle, with whom she was also having an affair.
Although she never seemed part of a couple because she's such a strident individual, while she won acclaim for Thelma And Louise and won an Oscar playing a nun opposite Sean Penn in Dead Man Walking, it seemed a given that hers and Robbins' was an equal and loving relationship.
The world was shocked when it broke down. "Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins have split up. Has the world come to an end?" One blog post read.
Sarandon and Robbins defy all the various theories that were tossed around at the time. Particularly the one that she being 11 years older than him wanted a quieter life. If anything the opposite is true. She never wants to be quiet. She's working on more projects than ever including parts in Robot And Frank with Frank Langella and Liv Tyler, The Company You Keep with Robert Redford and Julie Christie and Arbitrage with Richard Gere and Tim Roth, and recurring roles in 30 Rock and Big C.
'It's important to be interested. I thought I was going to take a few months off and then things kept coming up. I only pick parts that I really want to do. Often they're not major parts but they're things I haven't done before or people I want to work with, like 30 Rock. It was a reprise of something I'd done before and those people are talented, fun. If a part is the kind of person I'm not comfortable with it's all the more fun. The world opens up to you if you do these things. Somebody said does it get easier? I don't think it gets easier, but it gets better. It's a little scary but I feel like I'm living an authentic life right now. I feel happy. I feel I have more options because the kids are older and my situation being what it is. I feel like travelling more. We did a trip down to the Grand Canyon, my kids and some friends. We camped under the stars. No phones, nothing. It was crazy,' she says savouring the word.
A couple of years ago she opened a ping pong club in New York called Spin and got obsessed with it because girls could beat boys and old ladies could beat jocks.
At the time of the split with Robbins she told me that she was 'excited and terrified in equal parts.' How is she now? 'I think I'm about there, maybe slightly less terrified but I think so much is new and the kids are going through new stages, they are kind of educating me. It's definitely different. Everything scares me. When I take a part I take a part because it scares me. I'm used to being scared. I find that a good sign. Life is massive, you need to be awake.' She looks right at me, almost through me, to make her point.
I have read stories, I tell her, that say she is definitely dating her ping pong partner Jonathan Bricklin and other stories that say that's not true. I have no idea what to believe? 'Yeh,' she says, in a kind of pleased with herself growl. So which is it? 'I'd say we are collaborators in a lot of different areas.' I laugh. 'We have a lot of projects in different areas.'
So… does she like him? 'He's a great guy but I hate that expression dating.' I agree with her it's an awkward euphemism which she imagines I won't find a way round. There's nothing else for it. I ask her is she fucking him? She smiles, all coy. 'Don't you like the word collaborating?'
The thing is, no matter how brilliant an actor Sarandon is, and she is, she cannot lie. 'I'm not a good liar, so say whatever you'll say.' Collaborating in many areas is a good phrase. 'Unless it's the war and you are French.'
If it was the war and Sarandon was French she would definitely be in the Resistance. She loves a cause and she would fight it with all her heart. She's a committed liberal in every possible way. Rather the opposite to her character in the movie who is very irritated that her son is still living at home.
'Because of the economic situation these days you could have two degrees and still not have a job or be able to afford rent, or you get a divorce. So families live together. In Italy, in Israel there's a lot more families living together. Even if you're married you save up to get a house. It's never been seen necessarily that these people are slackers. The problem is children returning home that are twenty something and they still want you to do their laundry and their friends come over and trash the place. Sharon (her character in the movie) is worn out because Jeff is in the basement smoking weed.' And her own boys would never do such a thing? 'I don't know about that. But they do their own laundry.'
She seems to like the idea that she never had to face empty nest syndrome. Her children didn't so much rebel against her but with her. She's very proud of the fact that she got her tattoo before her son Jack.
How old was she when she left home? 'I left home at 17 and never came back. My spot got completely disappeared. I got married when I was 20 after my senior year. Chris Sarandon was a graduate student. He already had a job, so I went where he went. Crazy. What was I thinking?
Why did she get married? 'I got married to say thank you. He was the first man I slept with and he was so kind and so patient and at that time to stay in school and live together was impossible at Catholic universities. Things have changed, but now it seems like there's an influx of people who want to get married, including my daughter,' she says slight incredulous.
Sarandon never married again. Her daughter Eva's father was film director Franco Amurri. Their relationship was never intended to last. She got pregnant early on at 39 because she came off the pill having been told that she had endometriosis and couldn't get pregnant. Shortly after she met Robbins, the father of Jack Henry and Miles. Sarandon has always enjoyed passionate consuming relationships. 'Even ones that nearly killed me,' she once told me.
Is one marriage enough for her? 'Oh yeh. I really can't imagine it. Even when I got married we never said it was going to be forever, it was a kind of practical decision. I don't think I ever thought of it as something that would be a huge deal. But every year we renewed. We decided not with an actual ceremony but just said should we go through the next year. Actually I think it's good relationship strategy. We should revisit this before we have children to see if everybody is still on the same page and you have established that you have an option of it being nobody's failure.'
Did she renew frequently with Tim? 'No, we were not married. It wasn't about renewing anything. I felt married, I felt committed.'
There's a slight pause here, a slight little nag at her heart. 'If you have children they are never out of your life.'
She takes a sip from a brownish purple looking juice. It's a cold fruit tea 'to keep up my strength instead of caffeine. I crash after coffee.'
She has a ring on her thumb which says in French 'One must live not just exist.' I bought it for myself and it was delivered to me on the day of Louis Malle's memorial, which I thought was interesting since he was French and I'd been with him for a number of years.'
She was with Louis Malle for two years in the late seventies. The relationship with Malle was turbulent. She felt that she was the one who had to permanently surrender to him because she was the actor and he was the director.
'I always believe that lovers and certain people come into your life as well as certain jobs, for a reason. Even if it may not be clear at the time.'
There isn't any victim energy about her, yet she's always managed to be vulnerable. That takes power. Even the pain she seems to have utilised. In fact she rather enjoys embracing huge and raw emotions. Like her ring says, she doesn't want to just exist.
'This is the Cartier bracelet my daughter gave me for my 60th birthday. She saved up for it. I can't take it off that easily. I did a number of episodes for the Big C and wore it because it means so much to me. It reminds me of my tattoo. The tattoo round her wrist looks like a strand of barbed wire but it actually says "a new dawn a new day" to remind her to live in the present. Round her neck is a piece of glass that she found in a street in New York that is the shape of a heart. In her ear is a gold safety pin and the other ear has a diamond hoop.
'This is my daughter's baby pin. Someone gave it to me.' One ear says Pirate, the other ear says Punk.
'The virgin and the gypsy,' she says as she curls her feet under her looking effortlessly sultry. I can't imagine that she was ever a virgin. 'But I am over and over again every day.' I'm wondering if this idea comes because she wants to constantly renew everything or because of her Catholic upbringing. 'One doesn't recover from that childhood.'
In her case she's never stopped rebelling against it. Recently she caused a furore at the Hamptons Film Festival calling the Pope a Nazi. This movie includes a girl on girl kiss. 'It was a starter kiss.' Sarandon is an old hand at lesbian screen sex. In The Hunger she was full-on with Catherine Deneuve.
'Someone asked me the other day was that upsetting (for her to kiss a girl) and I said I guess you never saw The Hunger. The Hunger love scene took four days and there was much more body contact than that. In the beginning of the film I was much more uncomfortable. Just being that uptight and nasty all the time was uncomfortable. But I guess it will cause somebody to say now you are going to get the religious right down on you again.' In actual fact it's quite romantic.
'Did you know it's a big trend for women who are divorced to get together with other women and start a new life? I don't know how much sex had to do with it. The question is about the courage it takes to be intimate with another person. It's not about your age, colour or gender, it is do you ever want to be vulnerable and expose yourself to that vulnerability. It takes courage to put your hand out to the other person and say let's see what happens. It's huge,' she says.
She is mesmerising when she talks about this. I can't help but wonder is she talking about herself and the courage it took her to er, collaborate.
She says she doesn't have any new tattoos but her daughter just got a very big one of a hummingbird. They are a tight nit bunch, the family that gets tattoos together. 'I went with Jack to get his. And when I got the one on my back Eva got one that said "Conscious' meaning being awake.
'Both my boys are very sweet. Miles is thinking of getting a smiley face but he's not quite sure. I think he'll get one,' she nods approvingly.
Most children get tattoos to rebel against their parents, but she got hers first. 'I know it's horrible. Jack was a little upset that I got one before he did. Maybe it's bad for kids when they don't have anything to rebel against. There were things that I was strict about, but not tattoos.'
What were they? 'I was strict about how much time they would spend watching TV when they were growing up. Violence in films. Sex not so much. I was worried about the double standard. I wanted my boys to understand that blow jobs do ruin a girl's reputation and that they were responsible as much as she was and they had to understand the ramifications for other people involved. I was strict about them keeping in touch when they go away and about them being kind to each other.'
Once again the opposite to the character she plays. 'I just don't think she gets her son,' she says incredulously. 'Often the woman is the Wendy to everyone else's Peter Pan. You get tired with that. At one point I rebelled and stopped wearing a watch. I know nowadays everyone has a phone but then it meant I'm not going to keep telling you you have a game, you have to start to figure out what time to be there. Why does it have to be me that keeps nagging?'
Partly she has always taken responsibility for other people and been the facilitator because she is the oldest of nine. It was expected of her. There's a sense that she's done with all that and feels freer.
'I remember reading the book that said the mum is the entrée and dad is dessert. He's not around as much and everyone wants dessert. I was the one that dealt with the school forms, the schedules, the packed lunches, the shopping. And that's the curse of the competent woman. No one opens the door for them.' She flicks back her hair looking decidedly un-cursed.

The first thing you notice about Susan Sarandon is how comfortable she feels in her own body. She often talks about how proud she is of her breasts, but it's more than that. There is something about how connected she is to herself that makes her hugely charismatic and somewhat cosy to be with.

She is instantly accessible, perching on a little sofa in Claridges hotel wondering why the green tea is brown. She is wearing black jeggings, new balance trainers, an oversized sweater with a cream lace shirt underneath. A curious outfit, yet somehow you notice her not its oddness.

Her skin is flawless, her eyes huge and all consuming. She is not afraid to look at you and she's not afraid to let you look right in at her. It's an open face. No slyness, no manipulation, She is renowned for being a woman who doesn't fear most things, and certainly doesn't fear speaking her mind.

It is that truth telling that later on in the interview makes us come a little undone. But more of that later.

To start off we are embracing her fearlessness that makes her sexy at any age whether she is doing a lesbian love scene with Catherine Deneuve, as in The Hunger, driving off a cliff in Thelma and Louise, or reinventing the screen granny as she does in The Lovely Bones. Leopard skin accessories, Jackie O hair and racoon eyes, she's the sexiest thing in the movie that is a meditation on death. She can get away with political earnestness and make it look passionate, not dull.

We've met before. The last time a few years ago. She turned up feeling sick, had to go and vomit half way through the interview, but she didn't want to cancel because it might have inconvenienced me. She is old school, show must go on.

Today she is feeling healthy. She talks about her new regime of dehydrated fruits and vegetables with gusto, and her ping pong club in New York. Then she'll give you a catalogue of what drugs she's done and what exactly they do. There is no self-conscious talking about the movie even though there's an awards buzz already for her.

She won an Oscar for playing the nun in Dead Man Walking. She likes tortured movies. She also likes to have fun. Her career started off in the Rocky Horror Picture Show. She was Brooke Shields' hooker mother in Pretty Baby where she went on to have a long and tortured affair with its director Louis Malle. She specialises in every nuance of the mother role, making them in turns forceful, sexy and unsentimental. She was the most unvictimy cancer victim in Stepmom. You never see her moaning in life or movies.

She's just come from Sweden where she got a lifetime achievement award, but she's more excited that she met a table tennis gold medallist, "because I have opened a ping pong bar in Manhattan and I want him to come." Her sons Jack Henry, 20, and Miles, 17, have both deejayed there and it was one of the coolest places in Manhattan before it had even had a liquor licence.

"Girls can beat boys, old ladies can beat young guys, and little girls can beat older guys. It's about strategy, and you can't get hurt..." Her eyes do that spinning thing that they do when she's excited. Her ping pong fever started when she was working with an editor who was also making a documentary about ping pong. "I wouldn't say that I play very well but I make it possible for other people to play well. I like facilitating them."

Facilitating, nurturing, making things happen, organising, are all at the core of her. It's to do with her consummate mother energy. The oldest child of seven, a lifetime of doing things for other people. But who facilitates her?

"Not enough people, she says with a dryness that comes right from the back of her throat. That'S the curse of the confident woman. Most people know that if you take care of yourself and open your own doors they stop opening them for you. It's harder to ask for help because you get in the habit of taking care of yourself, and I think you forget how to ask." Her eyes look searching now. "I am trying to change all of that. I am trying to repattern myself now that my youngest is out of the house." The change seems to scare her and excite her in equal parts. The change is something she refers back to many times, it's a big deal, a new her.

She peers into her cup of brown green tea. She doesn't want to complain about her tea but she says, "Coffee is awfully tasty. I love the taste of coffee." She's on a regime. "I celebrated my 63rd birthday and got blood tests and saw a nutritionist. I want to do a preemptive strike on whatever is building up in me so I'm travelling with this dehydrated green stuff and red stuff and cutting out all sugar and all liquor. I rarely drink, so that wasn't hard. The bad one was bread. I love bread. I cheat sometimes. When I did the play (Exit The King on Broadway) I got run down and was drinking serious caffeine, so I needed to clean up my act. I'm very susceptible to drugs of every kind. Coffee, it's great because it gets me very up, but then I crash."

I tell her I find coffee comforting. It doesn't make me particularly speedy. She surmises authoritatively, "You are probably someone who takes Ritalin to calm them."

When she says drugs have such an effect on her, what kind of drugs does she mean? "I mean anything! I'm not really interested in drinking. Tequila maybe, but champagne makes me fall asleep. It doesn't take much. When I'm travelling I only need to take half an Ambien to sleep on the plane. I love mushrooms and I've done those successfully, but I don't like anything chemical. I didn't like LSD and ecstacy wouldn't agree with me. I like stuff you can smoke."

I tell her that I'm the opposite. The stuff you smoke makes me paranoid and depressed. "Oh that's sad," she says in a heartfelt way as if she's running through all the good times that I'll never have. "Everyone is wired differently. Some people can do stuff that others can't. That's what I told my kids. Some drugs can kill you. Some are not even worth trying. Some are a lot of fun, so talk to me first."

It doesn't surprise me that seven minutes into our interview we are discussing chemical versus herbal drugs in great detail. Sarandon is curious and open. Some things she just can't be bothered to hide or be polite about. She took drugs, so what. She doesn't watch her words and thinks she has to recreate a cleaner, blander, less-lived self for the purpose of an interview. She carries no weight of shame or self-consciousness.

She once said it was her ambition to be the longest working actor. She works a lot, but not in a divaish compulsive way. She doesn't need a star role, just one with meat on it. She loved working with Peter Jackson because, "he knew what he wanted. It was a very pleasant experience. I've been on films where I didn't particularly like the director, which wasn't the case here. You don't have to be best friends with someone but if they are passionate you respect them. I've also worked with directors who are just trying to get to dinner. They want their martini and to get out of there. And that's a terrible thing. I've done a number of low budget indie films lately where the director has also been the writer and they have cut at the bequest of the powers that be the very things that made their movies special because they think by homogenising a product it will appeal to the most amount of people and it will make the most money. Instead what happens is a watered down version of what you thought it was."

Sarandon has never become a homogenised version of herself, so it makes sense that this would irk her. Did she suffer by working on thing that were quirky and got homogenised? "Yeh. They're still waiting to come out," she deadpans. She doesn't want to say which ones they are but Solitary Man, Leaves Of Grass and The Greatest are all indie films with writer directors.

She's not bitter, just bemused. "I wouldn't have done them if those scenes had been out. People who are deciding how to market your film live in fear, so they are constantly trying to change the very thing they agreed on in the first place. Imagine in that movie with Cameron Diaz and Ben Stiller (There's Something About Mary), if the hair scene had been cut out? Imagine people saying, 'oh that goes too far'...

"When I did Dead Man Walking (for which she wore nun make-up and won an Oscar) people were trying to get me to have an affair or the guy not to die. The whole movie would have been completely different." In it she stays a nun and Sean Penn, the man on death row. does die, and it is of course brilliant. Someone who wouldn't stand up for themselves puzzles her because that's so alien to who she is.

"I'm not talking about the studio wanting to change things, I'm talking about the indie people!" Sarandon does not believe in a happy ending. She believes that pain is part of life. She believes in confronting it rather than coating with sentiment.

Did Lovely Bones make her think about mortality? "Well, I'm always thinking about it... I think it was interesting to think about how grief is processed. I remember talking to some firefighters wives months after 9/11 and them saying I'm still angry. People don't understand."

We talk briefly about how grief, just like drugs, affects people differently. It's a chemical process. We agree the coping mechanism is to disconnect from the pain until something in a movie that you are watching or something in a song suddenly reconnects you to it in an unexpected moment.

"I am just like that. I am so busy getting everyone else through it I don't luxuriate in whatever it is you have to go through." She sighs, perhaps recoiling from her lifelong role of being the enabler, the strong woman who gets everyone else through it.

In Wall Street 2 Sarandon plays Shia LaBeouf's mum. "She speaks for the smaller people who have been damaged by the economic situation. Her original profession was nurse. Then she started flipping houses in exclusive neighbourhoods, the kind of gate communities on Long Island where Shia's character is from. She gets over extended when the bubble bursts and is a casualty, and comes to depend on her son to bail her out. He is having his own financial problems and this puts more pressure on him.

"It's a small part, but Oliver insisted it was an important part because she is the only one who is not that high level of trading that the rest of the movie is about. People can identify with her.

"If you are running a small business you are constantly worried because very few people can make it because the banks are no longer lending in the way they were. But her job is a realtor. Hopefully I'm funny and I get a few laughs."

What was it like working with Shia? "He educated himself. He actually worked on Wall Street and immersed himself into that world, so I was very impressed. I like him a lot. He's a really keen kind of kid that works so hard."

What was the most difficult thing about your character? "I had to smoke and that was very difficult. The first scene at eight in the morning I was smoking and by lunch I was so ill. Later on in the movie I had given up smoking, but Oliver still wanted it.

"I got to wear lots of jewellery and long nails, so that stuff was fun. In the beginning they were long and manicured, and then they came off when times got tough. I think that's the difference when you have a regular income coming in, your self maintenance. In the beginning her hair is done and she has long French nails. And the next time she has hit rock bottom and has become kind of undone.

"I really admire entrepreneurs and I realise from running the ping pong bar, one little thing goes wrong and your profits are gone. Oliver keeps insisting that he's a great ping pong player, but I don't know if he can actually play. Josh Brolin turns out to be very good and took on Mel Gibson. When I play I have a really good time. You don't get hurt, you can be of any age and gender and stand a good chance of beating somebody. Little girls can beat 35-year old muscle men, and geeky kids can dominate. It's very good for the right side of your brain and they say that's good for alzheimers."

There's something about her though that loves it because it restructures any kind of caste or class system. Her story in Wall Street is about losing her quality of life and surviving and finding a happier place. How does she survive? Does she choose movies for money or for art? Did she ever do a movie just for the money?

"Usually when a script comes with a huge offer it's going to be bad, but then you decide what you are going to do. There are lots of variables. Sometimes you do a money job in order to finance a job where you are not going to make money. You do it for the experience. I have never said no to anything I wanted to do and I have never turned down a film because I didn't get the money. If I really want to do a film I do it."

Are you a spender or a saver? "I don't really have any relationship with money one way or the other. I don't really hoard it, but I'm not a big spender. I consume where my kids are concerned and I spend money on travel and trees. But I am not a buyer of jewellery or clothing and nor do I spend a lot of time in beauty parlours. What becomes clearer as I get older is I'm less interested in accumulating stuff. I love to buy presents for friends if I see something that's perfect for them. If I had tons of money I would buy Gore Vidal's house. A really pricey watch or pocketbook I can't really understand.

"I really don't think of money that much. Even when I was growing up and didn't have it, it seemed like I would always be able to get an avocado or the new Beatles album. I never felt like I was poor when I was poor. It's good to know I have money to send my kids to school and bring them home for the holidays, but I am fairly cautious and I would never invest in the stock market. I don't like to lose, so I'm not a good gambler. I don't have the gambling gene."

Perhaps her whole life has been part of bigger emotional gambles, so she's never had to exercise that muscle in casinos. "Perhaps. Certainly a lot of actors gamble. I think it's easier to not know what's going to happen when you're in this business because you trained yourself to get used to that. I feel sorry for the people who dedicate 35 years of their lives to a job and get laid off. They compromise for security and at the last minute that security is not there. My daughter is working as an actress now. At 24 she's already learning to make use of her down time because she doesn't know when she's going to work again."

How about emotionally? Do you take emotional gambles? "I do. I follow my heart because my feeling if I don't is much worse than if I get crushed. I try to bounce back and it gets you to the next place. Again, that is a muscle you develop when you act. You develop not an immunity to pain or insecurity, but in the back of your psyche you know you can survive if you hold on long enough because you've been up and down long enough.
"I believe in serendipity. I believe it is one of the things that has given me an incredible life, the fact that I am able to get off a train and change direction."

Changing direction with Tim Robbins must have been a major emotional traffic jam. After so many year of being such a solidly shimmering couple whose love seemed so earnest and true it would never break down it shocked the world that they were no longer together."Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins have split up. Has the world come to an end?" one blog post read. Everyone is shocked. And what of Sarandon? Is that why she wants to reinvent herself? Unleash her old patterns? Radically detox physically and emotionally? She is not just scared and excited about her green and red pills. It's her whole new emotional landscape. How is she navigating the separation? "We are just focusing on all the good things that we have accomplished in our lives, in our careers, in the world and especially in our family over the last 20 years. That's how we are dealing with it."
But is she OK? Is she on the road to survival? "Yes. I am in that place of excited and terrified, and that's probably how you should live your life all the time."

Has she lived her life like that all the time? "I think to be authentic and rush towards joy is not an easy thing, it's an ongoing process. Someone asked me the other day when I found my authentic voice and I told them that I think what I have learnt is that who you are, your relationship to your partner and your art, has to be seen as a living thing that is constantly breathing and changing and growing and surprising you. Once you reach a point where you try and keep it, preserve it, then it goes dead. You always have to be curious and asking questions of yourself to define who you are, what you want and what you can give." Sarandon is all about moving on, survival, never dwelling on the negative.

"Some people get really pissed off with bereavement. Others can't get out of bed. I know when my dad passed away I was much more objective. There were things to be done and I felt I needed to do them."

As the eldest of seven she was used to taking charge. "They all needed me and they all needed to get up and speak at the memorial and I really didn't want to because I didn't want it to be about me, so I didn't speak. I was seeing my dad every weekend but he wasn't living in my house. I think unless you are living with someone you can delude yourself."

Her agent of 25 years, Sam Cohen, also recently passed away. "I did speak at the memorial. I was flattered they asked me. It was very difficult. You try not to just wail and at the same time you are incredibly disconnected."

She is so disconnected she hasn't crossed out dead people's names from her phone book. She uses an old fashioned phone book. It's somehow more vicious to cross them than to delete them from a mobile phone.

"I'm always telling my kids they should have a backup because if you lose your phone everything gets stolen. I look at my phone book and there is a whole history there. I don't cross out the dead people. I think it's kind of nice. I hold on to T-shirts and gifts that people who have passed away have given me.

A few months ago when she performed Ionesco's Exit The King on Broadway, which is all about confronting death, she had turned her dressing room into a little shrine for people who had passed.

"I would talk to them before I went on for perspective. They were people I thought would like the play like Bob Altman and Paul Newman. I would say help me remember this is just a play and not take myself so seriously."

Did she feel they talked backed? "No, but I did feel good having them there. I also had all new little souls, babies and pictures of my kids when they were little and new babies that had just been born."

Does she believe that souls get passed on? "You mean reincarnation? Maybe. I'm not so sure about the recycling of souls situation, but the one thing that makes me believe that something goes on is that I felt that I had completely already known my children in some way shape or form before they were born. When my daughter (Eva) was about three she asked me when we'd first met, and I started to tell her the story of her birth, and she said no, I remember when I wanted to pick you as my mother. I remember when Jack had his first birthday and she was five, she said, Jack and I knew each other when we were the same age. She also said, every year I get younger and younger as I give away stuff, and I said what kind of stuff, and she said I get younger and lighter because I'm getting rid of bullshit. I went into her class at school and said what are you teaching her? And they said oh no, that's just her.

"Elizabeth Kubler Ross wrote the book about the five stages of dying and she wanted me to do a movie about her life. She had these spiritual friends. She saw people that had passed on and came back and talked to her. She said that kids had the easiest time passing on because they didn't have so many attachments.'

I think she would have trouble leaving, I think she would hang on. "Absolutely. I'm not ready at all. I have at least another 40 years, but I think about dying all the time. How could you not? But I think I am manifesting this very interesting life right now." Her eyes seem to ignite and become orbital. They miss nothing, take in everything, and it's as if the more she thinks about death the more urgent life becomes, the more in the present she is.

She told me once that you are the protagonist in your own life. Meaning you are the one that makes things happen and you don't have to be the victim. There's not a whisker, a shadow, of victim energy about her. That's why she never hit 40 and thought it's over for a woman in Hollywood. The first time she played a mother she was 32 and that didn't represent the milestone that it could have been. She doesn't seem to look at things as milestones, more like opportunities to learn. Even pain she seems to cherish as a poetic experience.

Her relationship with Louis Malle sounds epically tortured. He was the director, she was the actress, he was used to being the driving force. And she had to surrender to be the one who was driven. "I learnt a lot from him because he was from France and older. I don't regret any of the relationships I've had, even the ones that practically killed me." She talks about sobbing for days and being humiliated, but never for long. "I always believe that lovers and certain people come into your life as well as certain jobs. It may not be clear at the time but they come for a reason. Exit The King - 120 nights meditating on death. That definitely changes you."

So she thinks she knew her children from another life, did she know her lovers? She laughs a sparkly eyed laugh. "No. No." And then concedes. "Maybe one, but I'm not going to say which one and I didn't have that feeling of recognition when I met each of my children. When my children were born they were exactly the people they are now. Forget that nurture nature thing. I remember looking at my daughter. She could have been an alien. She was such a strong presence. She wasn't like meeting me half way. She arrived, who she is.

"When Jack arrived he was completely different. I thought that was because he was a boy. And then when the other boy, Miles, came, he was completely different again. I remember Francine, who was the mother of Donald Sutherland's children saying to me, 'The way they take to the breast will tell you exactly who they are going to be...'" And how did they? "One of them was very interested in breasts. One of them just smiled."

Were the boys more interested than the girls? "Not necessarily. Jack was very loud when he was born and came very quickly, and he's still loud, very outgoing. Even when you couldn't understand a thing he was saying he was introducing me to the maitre d'. He's now studying film at USC and writing. He is a people person. He could be a union organiser. Jack is a lot like Tim. He likes going to parties. Whereas Miles is a lot more like me - over six people and I'm overwhelmed. I remember thinking no wonder no one gets along in our house, everyone is a leader in different ways. There are no followers.

"Miles has just done a CD, he is a musician. Both of them DJ at my club." Miles is 17 and will be leaving to go to college shortly. Isn't that called empty nest, and doesn't that come with a syndrome? "Yes, liberation." She says she is going to change everything and she is looking forward to "repatterning" herself.

"I have been living a wonderful life but I have to rediscover my voice. I have been a function of my family's needs for such a long time." Everyone thinks of Sarandon as dynamically outspoken, yet she's better at speaking other people's needs. "It doesn't mean I'm not outspoken. It doesn't mean I haven't worked, but I have put them first. I have defined myself as a mother first, always checking the schedules. I was doing it with my siblings. My son said, 'You are the glue that keeps the family together.' And I'm sure an element of that will remain."

It's like her whole life she's been trying to escape being the caretaker, the responsible one. She's escaped into rebellious parts. On films she can push boundaries, be daring. Perhaps now she can incorporate that sense of daring into real life.

She left home to go to Catholic university in Washington DC. "I couldn't wait to leave home. I was always shy but I knew there was something outside. That was the main

Yet she hadn't been in college long before she got married. Why did she get married so young? "At that time you couldn't live together if you weren't married. He was a graduate student. I was 17 when I met him and slept with him when I was 19 and got married when I was 20. How backwards is that? I was a Catholic and I was living with my grandparents to save money." Did she love him? "Oh yes, he was a dear man, and very instrumental. I felt very safe with him. He introduced me to black and white movies and poetry. There is a huge difference between a graduate student and a freshman."

There's almost romantic yearning when she talks about this first love, Chris Sarandon, whose name she kept. "It's a very good name." The marriage didn't last because perhaps she wanted more than safety. "I think there was a certain point where I needed to go on to the next step and I needed something different. I didn't know what it was at the time and we ended up being something else." She goes on to explain how they both ended up having children and how her son Jack is the same age as his son Max. She describes it as if it's a life that could have been hers. She describes it with nostalgia and distance in equal parts.

After her marriage broke down she had a kind of meltdown. It's hard to explain exactly what triggered it, it seems to have been many things. Perhaps believing that life was going to be certain and safe and discovering it was not. At the time she decided she would get through it without any pharmaceutical help. She hates chemicals. "It worries me that people see pain as an alien thing. There won't be any poetry if everyone is on such an even keel."

One imagines that growing up Catholic influenced a lot of how she felt disappointment when love turned out not to conquer all, and also the way she sees marriage. She only got married once, and not to Eva's father, director Franco Amurri. She fell pregnant in a miraculous accident. She had been told her endometriosis would mean she could never have children and she stopped taking the pill. She had not known Amurri long before they became parents. Their relationship was never meant to last. She met Tim Robbins on the set of Bill Durham in 1988. She never planned to marry him. "I don't get the marriage thing. When people ask me to support gay marriage they are asking the wrong person." Sarandon seems to rail against being a couple rather than an individual. Plus playing safe doesn't exist for her.

"My daughter talks about getting married. She thinks it will be great, and a great party... My friend had a daughter who got married pretty young. She was about 23 and it was a huge wedding and she is a celebrity and her daughter is a celebrity and she said, 'It's a good first marriage.' I thought fair enough, a few years and one child later she's not married any more." I think we can figure out that's Goldie Hawn and Kate Hudson but Sarandon does one of those cartoon smiles.

Did she think she would be with Tim forever ?
"i have no idea." Cartoon smile disappears.

I wonder if the tattoo round her wrist, which looks like a ring of barbed wire, is a symbol for relationship torture. "No. It only looks like barbed wire. It says, 'A new dawn, a new day' to remind me that every day you come into the world you are born again a new person. I have a very large one on my back which I got during the filming of Lovely Bones. It's my kids initials."

Typical Sarandon. Never does things in the right age or order. She discovered tattoos in her sixties and has made tattoo sharing a family event.

"My son just got one and my daughter just got one together when I got this one on my wrist. She got Latin words for being present and being conscious written in typewriter script and my son got a Ganesh."

So you all went together as a family? "No. Just me and my daughter, and my son was very angry that I got mine before his, but he couldn't think what he wanted. I left after the matinee of Exit The King and met him at the tattoo place and went back for the evening show, so I was there for most of his tattoo.

"I had given him a little Ganesh when he graduated from high school and he was going to travel around Europe. He was afraid he was going to lose it. So he put a duplicate of it as a tattoo. Miles doesn't have one yet but he will get one."

Sarandon has never been able to be stereotyped. There is nothing rigid about her. Playing a grandmother in The Lovely Bones has not made her feel old or unsexy. "I think we have to revamp the idea of what it means to be a grandmother. This one is the anti granny."

She is the only sexy funny thing in the movie and that is her purpose, to lift it, to stop it from being turgid and too tragic. "I loved the hair, and the outfits were fabulous. I had hair and make-up like that in those days and I wore a fall at the back. But hers was a gorgeous wig and the arc of my character is seen through her hair. In the end it's limp and discombobulated. It was my own hair by then. She didn't have time and with grief your maintenance just goes."

Sarandon does not look self-consciously maintained. She looks good because she looks herself. Her career spans a huge range of characters. She was never compartmentalised. She always fought not to be diminished by a label.

"I think that's true. Everything used to be over by the time you were 40. When I did Bill Durham I had just turned 40 and that was a great part."

She played a baseball groupie and felt very sexy in that role, and it's special to her because it's when she first met Robbins. Does she still feel sexy? "Yes, I am sexy. Someone said to me recently do you think about ageing, and I think what's the choice? I think a lot about what we don't like aesthetically about women that are fighting ageing is fear manifesting. I don't think you should try to look 22 when you are in your sixties. There is something odd about a woman who looks younger than she did 20 years ago. It's so self-conscious. I'm not against anybody doing anything to themselves that makes them feel good, but I think aesthetically some fillers and stuff make people unrecognisable. It's difficult to watch somebody's face, to see someone who has lips that are unrecognisable. I think you are going against your own branding and I think there are a lot of people who have trusted the wrong people
"There are a lot of things that you can do that are fine, but when you get really into doing stuff you look at that person and you think, 'Oh my God, that looks just like.... Oh my God, it is her.' I've never had fillers, and how can you get botox when you're an actor?"

Has she ever had anything done? "Yes, I had under my chin sucked out once. I think we have to be supportive of each other and if someone wants to get implants or tucks you hope that that will be fine and they will keep the essence of who they are and not go over the top."

Does she have a regime to stay in shape? "I have a trainer for strength because I don't want osteoporosis to come and I do gyrotonic when I can. Young actors ask me why is your skin so great, what is your product, and all I say is stop smoking, that's the big one. And just not over indulging and being happy. Laughing does a lot for the face. Do the things you enjoy. Surround yourself with good people. Denying yourself is not good for the face. You can't be a bitter angry person. Hatred is unsexy and not great for your skin."

Interestingly that's what's written on her face, laughter lines but no scowling lines. There are lines of pleasure but no evidence of restraint. Nothing is pinched.

There has been talk of an Oscar nomination for Lovely Bones. "I would love that," she says instantly without false modesty. She loves her work, but the beauty is however serious it is she doesn't take it seriously. "Acting itself is really not that complicated. It's surviving as a human being that's difficult."

Yoko Ono is noiselessly tapping at her MacBook. Everything about her is quiet and compact, even the keyboard on her computer doesn't whisper.
She is wearing a black fitted jacket and trousers. It is low cut and reveals a tiny womanly figure. Her hair is in soft spikes and she is wearing her trademark round glasses. Her skin is fine lined only. It doesn't sag.
It's hard to believe she's nearly 80. She is weirdly ageless. Her face iconic through all these years.
After we meet she will go to open a museum in Liverpool and meet the Queen. Any excitement, just like any suffering, doesn't seem to resonate within her.
We meet in London because she has been in talks with The Serpentine gallery about her forthcoming exhibition in June. It's called Smile. It was conceived as a way of connecting people across the world without language, just an image of their smiles.
'The smile is such an important thing and I actually wrote that we had to do this in nineteen sixty something. It's taken 50 years. In the last page of my Grapefruit book I asked for people to send in pictures of their smiles. It was a big picture. I thought it might take a while. I visualised it. Sometimes you have to wait…' she laughs. 'Even 50 years.'
John Lennon once described his wife as 'the world's most famous unknown artist: everyone knows her name but no one knows what she actually does.'
This is possibly because he eclipsed her. Or at least John and Yoko the couple eclipsed them both as individuals.
Before they met Yoko Ono was an established avant-garde artist. They met at one of her shows. 'In a way both John and I ruined our careers by getting together, although we weren't aware of it at the time.'
She led him away from the mainstream, away from The Beatles, into more experimental layered music, and he led her further into him. Ono has never been a multi-tasker. She enjoys and demands complete focus.
I first met her in her home in the Dakota building. John Lennon's famous white piano sat in the window. Magritte painting on the wall. And dozens of framed photographs of John and Yoko. Their past still omnipresent.
Ono is a very unusual woman. Her perceptions always have an edge and she's never afraid to say what she thinks. She told me, 'I love the way you've got one tooth sticking out. Really you wouldn't be attractive at all without it.' Somehow I found that amusing and sweet.
She has always had an idea that people could live for as long as they wanted and that soon scientists would make us healthy and disease free and we would choose when we died.
Right now she's choosing work. After all the years of being half of a famous couple and somehow reviled for that she's finally made it back to being an artist.
Before the Smile exhibition there was an exhibition in India of women's bodies, human sculptures. And before that another in Sydney. It seems unusual to be starting again so late in life, but not to her.
'I want to tell you this story. When I was in elementary school in Japan they had a textbook with a picture of a Japanese warrior who asked to be given seven sufferings and eight disasters because he wanted to take over everybody's suffering and disasters. It's a courageous thing to do and I was only a little girl and I thought that sounds good and I wanted to be like him. Do good for the world in the sense of taking everyone's pain away.
'I asked for the seven sufferings and my life became terribly difficult. All sorts of misery and sufferings. And when it got to around 1979 I thought what did I do wrong. So I said I'm going to change it. Give me seven lots of luck and eight treasures. My disaster became my treasure. I reversed it.'
Does she mean she did this in 1980 when John died? 'No. My karma didn't affect him. John's death was the worst of everything.
'I had to work hard to un-curse myself. Don't you think it's great that human beings can change luck and direction,' she says.
We come back to the Smile exhibition. 'Don't you think it's better to smile than to scowl?' Does she never get angry? 'Yes, I'm angry every day but I don't hold on to it because it will make you physically sick. You don't keep it inside. You don't blame anybody.'
She didn't blame Lennon for eclipsing her career. Does she think she had to choose, art or love? 'Definitely. I was a proud person thinking my work was any good anyway. When I got pregnant I had to concentrate on being pregnant for a whole nine months, even though I knew it was ruining my career at the time.'
When she was pregnant with Sean she had bed rest for most of the pregnancy because she didn't want to have another miscarriage. She was already 42 and had lost several babies. It was frustrating for her because first and foremost she was an artist. Her art has always been a way to cauterise her emotions and extricate herself from the anger and pain that she didn't want to carry.
'John got a wheelchair and he would push me around into the kitchen where there would be lunch. Isn't that sweet?'
She has a very strong relationship with her son Sean. Is very enthusiastic about his music and his girlfriend. She became pregnant with him just after she and Lennon had got back together after his affair with their assistant May Pang.
'I was very aware that we were ruining each other's career and I was hated and John was hated because of me. We did everything together and we did everything publicly together. The Bed In was our work for peace but we weren't liked for it. How come they are even working together? Many girls were upset with this. They were jealous. It was a very difficult time. How I survived at all was a miracle. I survived by thinking about my art work. That was the most exciting thing. Everybody saw a film called The Pianist. He's going through torture, and he's still playing the piano. That's all he can do, to live in his mind.'
It's very ironic that they campaigned for world peace when the world was at war with the idea of John and Yoko. 'Yeh. It is. And that was upsetting. The affair was something that was not hurtful to me. I needed a rest. I needed space. Can you imagine every day of getting this vibration from people of hate? You want to get out of that. Also, we were so close John didn't even want me to go to the bathroom by myself. I will come with you he would say. And this would be in public places like EMI recording studios.
'I started to notice that he became a little restless on top of that, so I thought it's better to give him a rest and me a rest. May Pang was a very intelligent attractive woman and extremely efficient. I thought they'd be okay.'
Didn't she miss him when she was in New York and he was on the other coast of America in Los Angeles? 'We missed each other. We were calling each other every day. Some days he would call me three or four times. He lived in LA, but that was fine. I was prepared to lose him, but it was better he came back. I didn't think I would lose him.'
Does she believe that monogamy is possible in a love relationship? 'I don't think so.' She pauses, always wanting to answer honestly but it's a long time since she's been involved with anyone at all. Although she insists she is not lonely. 'I'm enjoying my freedom now. Men's attitudes are very different now. When I met John it seemed old fashioned. I'm not the kind of person who'd ever pursue a guy because I was pursuing my work.'
She scrunches her nose up as she talks about men being predators. It's been several years since she was linked to a man. Around a decade ago she was said to be dating Sam Havadtoy, an antiques dealer. Does she ever get lonely?
'You can be lonely when you have a guy living with you. I cherish moments of not having a guy around, but my work involves being with people, usually guys. I think I'm very lucky. I've got so many things going on all the time.'
It seems unusual that Ono became so inextricably linked with Lennon. She has always been a rebel and fiercely independent. She grew up in a conservative aristocratic family in Tokyo. Her mother's family were founders of a merchant bank and her father who wanted to be a concert pianist was forced to give up his musical desires to also enter the banking world. He very much wanted his daughter to live out his dream.
She was sent to a school for musically gifted toddlers and learnt to play to performance calibre. She was the first female student to be accepted on the philosophy course at Gakushuin University. She was always the rebel. Her mother told her to never marry and if she did never have children. So as a form of rebellion she married composer Toshi Ichiyanagi.
When the relationship ended she met American jazz musician and art promoter Tony Cox. They married and had a daughter, Kyoko. John and Yoko were not only bad for each other's careers but their meeting and obsession with each other caused havoc as they were both married to other people.
Tony Cox kidnapped his daughter when she was around seven and Ono didn't see her again until she was 31. 'It was very hard. I remembered her as a little girl and I kept buying her small beautiful cashmere sweaters. They piled up in my dressing room until someone said to me do you realise she's now 26, she's probably larger than you, why are you keeping those little things? It was terrible. I didn't know where she was. It was a kidnapping and a very difficult situation. She had so much love for her father who took care of her all that time and he had said very clearly that if she searched me out she would never see him again.
'She got married and before they were going to have a child the husband said - he's a very intelligent guy - you have to say hello to your mother before you have the baby because the baby is going to wonder where the grandmother is. So she came.' Now she has two grandchildren. Is she close to them? 'In a way,' she says.
She looks slightly pained, perhaps because her own upbringing was so lacking in love. 'I adored my mother but it wasn't reciprocated. She was too busy with her own life. She was a painter. She was searching for something. Her style was very precise. Incredible. She fell in love with my father and it's the same old story, she resented the children.'
Did your mother get on with your husbands? 'No. Of course she didn't like the child kidnapper, although she approved of the first husband. I don't think she cared about what I did but her pride was hurt when she heard that I had gone off with a working class guy from Liverpool. The family put out a press release in Japan saying we are not proud of Yoko Ono.' She gasps and the gasp turns into a laugh. 'Isn't that amazing.
'I would be scared if I was involved with a guy these days. Women have become stronger and there's a backlash. Men have become terribly possessive. I find it much easier to get on with women. Whatever we fall out over I can always forgive women. '
She says this with some incredulity. She hasn't always found it easy to bond with people. Her childhood was privileged but isolated. She didn't have friends. 'It didn't occur to me that I was supposed to play with people.' When she met Lennon, who had also had a lonely childhood where he lived with his Auntie Mimi. They must have connected on this level.
She tells me that being pregnant felt very alien to her. When pregnant with Kyoko she says, 'It was really difficult for me to adjust to that. I didn't think it was going to be the last of my career. I didn't think of it as a sacrifice. I just kept thinking that I had a tumour inside of me.' She laughs. I laugh. 'I'm just being honest,' she says now embarrassed. 'Now I'm going to be getting flack from people saying I'm destroying motherhood. I'm told some women love being pregnant but I haven't met any of them.
'I had miscarriages before my daughter and after. I've never had an abortion. I think it was written that I had. 'My daughter was such a beautiful baby I fell in love with her the minute she was here. Emotionally we are close, at least now we are.'
How did it affect your relationship to have her taken away for so many years? 'I told myself that at least he loves her. Maybe she was okay with him. I was going through so much prejudice I questioned everything.' Suddenly she becomes tense and doesn't want to talk about it any more.
She is not afraid to look right at you. She doesn't seem to be afraid of much. 'DNA is a strange thing. Kyoko and Sean's handwriting is so similar it's impossible to tell the difference. People say Kyoko looks like me and Sean looks like John.' Perhaps that's why she is so close to Sean. It provides a connection.
You can see a thousand thoughts flicking through her brain at once. She processes ideas quickly. She doesn't like to eat much. 'Just vegetables that are light on your body. Carbohydrates that are easy to digest.' It's as if she doesn't want to be weighed down by anything whilst she's thinking.
'I eat two meals a day that are not heavy. Once I did a 40-day juice fast with John. I felt that gave me strength and my body patience but I didn't ever do it again.
'After I had my daughter I just never felt like wanting liquor so I never drank again. I was smoking until ten years ago. But society is so down on smoking everywhere you looked you will get cancer. I thought I would get cancer just by reading that so I thought I had better stop. I am one of those very addictive types, so I don't want to start it again.'
You don't imagine Ono as vulnerable or weak in any way. You imagine that she's wise and controlled. She smiles at that idea.

The first time I met Lenny Kravitz he said I was the only person he'd ever met whose jewellery he could wear as his own.
The first time I met Lenny Kravitz he said I was the only person he'd ever met whose jewellery he could wear as his own. Actually we were both wearing similar stacked leather and alligator skin bracelets, some beaded wraps and two or three silver necklaces.
Kravitz is a man for whom too much is never enough. His pale brown skin is beautifully tattooed with many dragons and a new black heart on his wrist. He has multiple piercings including a double pierced nose.
And we remember him when all those years ago he Let Love Rule in bottom skimming dreads , love beads and vintage T-shirts His style has always been a statement. It oozed Kravitzness from its lizard skin cowboy booted toes to its excessive hair.
His look for the movie Hunger Games is radically different. After making a promising start as an actor as the nurse in Precious he plays the character of Cinna in the movie based on the young adult books by Suzanne Collins. It is set in a dystopian future where teenagers are selected to fight each other to the death for a TV show. It is set to be bigger than Twilight. And as compulsive.
He drapes himself feline-like on a sofa making the creamy yellow of the generic Beverly Hills hotel seem just a little cool. His character 'is a stylist who is more than just a stylist. I played him a little bit more laid back than a lot of fans imagined he would be portrayed. You might imagine him to be flamboyant but there are so many flamboyant characters in the film, when I was discussing the character with Gary (Ross, The director) I thought it would be interesting if I played him more of an Yves St Laurent or a Tom Ford.'
His hair in the movie is tamed, clipped and neat. His face fresh and he wears a black shirt, slick black suit combo. Sort of anonymous chic.
'Although he is the stylist he is the most subdued in his clothes. He's very streamlined, sometimes a black waistcoat to his suit. A little piece of jewellery, perhaps a touch of gold eyeliner, and that's it, very basic.'
Not like him at all then. He laughs rather heartily and tells me there's been no new piercings and only one new tattoo, the black heart, to commemorate his Black and White America tour.
'I have a lot of different moods so I go between being laid back and flamboyant depending on the mood.'
Today's mood is an Emma Cross leather jacket whose tight-fitted sleeves flare out just over the knuckles. Black jeans, black boots, several necklaces. 'This fits me like a second skin.'
His style although still flamboyant has evolved. It's more subtle, less vintage, although he can wear jewellery almost like no other. How did he develop his style?
'It started very young, when I was a little kid, five or six. (He's now 47). The first concert I went to was the Jackson 5. They wore great clothes. And then I saw James Brown at the Apollo. And I tried to copy them.
My parents were friends with Miles Davis who had amazing style. And I saw all of this as a child. My mother was an actress so she was around theatre folk that dress really colourful with great pieces of jewellery and hats.'
He notices I have a seventies style black felt floppy hat with gold chain ribbon. He demands I put it on and conduct the rest of the interview hatted.
'I used to play in my mother's closet and put on hats, scarves, belts. I would play in there all day and put stuff on like I was Jimi Hendrix, and that's how it started. Being around these colourful people, I loved it, I thought it looked great, it was very expressive.
'The cover of the album Black and White America is me at seven wearing peace and love and all this stuff written on me. That's the way I was then.'
He is intending to do more acting and already songs for another album and at the same time is launching a home furnishings line and is designing the SLS Hotel in Miami with Philip Starck.
'He and I have known each other casually throughout the years. I invited him to my house in Paris and he saw my furniture and he really liked the pieces. He said "You need to be doing this. I will support you." And he did.'
What does the Kravitz couch look like? 'Once you sit in it you don't want to get up. Extremely stylish but extremely comfortable. A lot of things look great in the photographs but when you have to live in it it's not happening.'
When he's not touring his homes are extremely different. There's his luxuriant house in Paris and a trailer in the Bahamas and a farm in Brazil. 'Paris is a house for living in, friends and family to come together.'
It's at this house where his daughter Zoe when working on the X-Men film brought back her friend Jennifer Lawrence with whom he stars in The Hunger Games.
'It did make it very comfortable since we were already close. The role has the same kind of dynamic that we already have, someone looking out for her.'
Does his clothes have to be as comfortable as his furniture? 'Yes. Obviously I've gone through phases. I started out very retro. I looked like I stepped out of the seventies because that's what I felt comfortable with. It had a modern edge but I had the dreads, the whole thing.
'Now I wear modern clothes. Maybe a thrift piece here and there. The modern stuff still has that retro sensibility.'
Does he think there's an age where a man needs to pay less attention to fashion? 'No. my dad was very stylish the whole time I knew him. Until he died he loved clothes. His suits were De Niro meets Warren Beatty, double-breasted. I have a couple of jackets that I wear like that.'
We talk about how that seventies almost feminine cut strangely accentuates masculinity. 'Whether you are more on the bohemian side or the classic it doesn't matter, as long as you retain your thing.
'My hair has changed a lot. I've had it from shaved to Afro and now it's just a little Afro.'
The mini-fro is a couple of inches high and reasonably neat. 'if I were to dread up right now I would have had to cut them off for a film. I had them for ten years and now they are in storage. My hair is like this because it's easier for films.'
Is his Paris wardrobe very different to his Bahamas? 'The contrast is what I know. In the Bahamas there's no thought of shoes or wallets. I will wear the same clothes for two weeks, wash them down and put them out on a rock and get them later.'
For the rest of the time he admits to being 'a complete clothes whore.'
Might be difficult for him to live with someone in the Bahamas. They might complain that he didn't change his clothes for two weeks. 'No, the dirt there is clean. It's all natural. And I would love to share my life. That is the purpose and I'm open to that.
'I think I'll have to find somebody who is willing to travel round the planet with me because seeing somebody three or four times a year is not happening for me. You've got to have a relationship, not just Skype. I've been a gypsy since I was 15 and I haven't stopped moving.'
Odd then with all this moving around he spends time designing a home line from couches to candlesticks. 'I design all the things I want. I eat healthy and organically, keep my mind as straight as possible, and thank God for each day. Each day is a gift even if you are feeling tired or a little down with whatever might be my schedule. I have to remember how blessed I am.'
One day in LA means there will be just enough time to take in one of his favourite shops, The Church. It carries a lot of one-off lines that are vintage inspired. However busy he is, he's never too tired to shop.

Sting divides people completely, much more than Marmite or foxhunting. It must be something that he rather enjoys - otherwise he couldn't have survived it this long.
Sting has been a famous person who has been mocked and adored for what seems a lifetime. There was another life before that, the one he was born to. It was in Wallsend, the eldest son of a milkman. It was a life he didn't fit into. He was a bus conductor, a primary school teacher, a tax collector and a musician on the side. In this life Sting was called Gordon Sumner. In most ways he has come a long way from being Gordon, but in others he is not far at all.
Incredibly, he is now 60. He doesn't look it, but he's very aware of it. Both his parents had died of cancer before they reached 60. His life has been dedicated to forward momentum. A life on the road on tour or just revolving from houses in Wiltshire, New York, Tuscany, Malibu.
In recent years though it's been his other life that he's turned to. He needed to wrestle with some ghosts. It's now that very thing that he ran away from that has driven him and inspired him. He grew up in the shadow of Swan Hunter's, the shipyard on Tyneside. He has written a musical - The Last Ship. It's about leaving, coming back and a man's need for work and community and a man's need for love.
In the streets of Newcastle taxi drivers love Sting. They can joke with him, reminisce, and they tell me how he doesn't take himself seriously, and he's a generous tipper.
Match that with the man whose mission for a long time was to save rainforests to offset his rather large carbon footprint. A man who likes to talk about the intricacies of tantric sex and pose in a pouty boudoir shoot with a lingeried Trudie Styler, his wife and mother of four of his six children. You get a picture of a complicated man, a man where extremes meet.
Before we get to Newcastle we have Paris. A darkly lit hotel room. He's just flown in from doing a show in Vancouver. It's winter. He air hugs me because he doesn't want to catch my cold. Normally he likes to be touched.
He's wearing old brown cords that are soft and a navy cashmere jumper that's vaguely fluffy that seems to say stroke me. He stretches his arms in a yawn and reveals his taught yoga stomach. His trousers drop and brightly coloured boxers are revealed.
'You haven't said anything about my hair,' he says with mock petulance. His head is shaved. 'I like shaving my head. I'm addicted to it. I like the feel of it.'
He runs his hand over his stubble and tells me that women come up and feel him and stroke him like a dog, and then he laughs at himself.
I love Marmite, hate foxhunting, love Sting. I am from Newcastle. I feel kinship. I love men who are sentimental but not soft, who feel emotions sorely and express them only as a joke or a song. Sting is complicated but above all Sting is kind.
'So here we are being flagrant,' he says. Flagrant strikes me as being a good word for him. He's a consummate flirt, a tease and he loves to perform. I've seen him put on a great show and heseems to be on a perpetual tour. Last year it was the Symphonicities tour with the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra, all sweeping keyboards and lush melodies. Now it's the Back To Bass tour, the other extreme. No keyboards, his bass guitar, a couple of violins, percussion. Stripped back.
Jet lag kept him awake. 'I was praying for the daylight. I was first in for breakfast at 6am this morning. I had porridge and coffee.' He looks at me suspiciously again. 'I cannot get a cold. I cannot work with a cold. I avoid them by willpower. As soon as I stop touring I'll get a cold. The adrenalin gets you through a show. A cold is difficult,' he sniffs theatrically.
Adrenalin and constantly being on the road seems to get him through a lot of things. I tell him he's trying to make me feel guilty for giving him a cold. 'Guilt is a totally useless emotion.'
He rarely looks back. Guilt is something that he'll circumnavigate until its essence is a song. He'll wrestle it out of his life. 'Anger is a useful emotion to get you out of situations if you are trapped.'
Does he feel trapped? Is that why he's addicted to being on the road? Or is it the adrenalin? Is it the sharp focus of being in the present? The shows must go on. Another day another city?
'It's a lovely feeling. You're out in front of 5, 10,000 people and everyone's pleased to see you. It's hard to replace that. And it's also hard to express how wonderful that feels. Everything seems amplified by the lights and the occasion. Am I addicted to it? Probably. I'm addicted to that forward momentum. I don't like staying in a city too long. Tomorrow is somewhere else. Let's move.'
You wonder of course about all this moving about, or what it is he's running from. Running has been a constant in his life. He ran from Newcastle to form The Police. He ran away from The Police when they were one of the world's most successful bands in the early eighties. He never told the band it was over. Perhaps because it wasn't. Years later in 2007 they reformed. They finally got closure. 'You can abandon something, you can never finish it. Relationships are never finished.'
He ran from his first marriage to actress Frances Tomelty, he was always gigging or recording. It imploded in 1982 when he fell in love with his neighbour Trudie Styler. At the time he thought she looked like a 'damaged angel.' Yet it was she who healed him. He says that she has made him whole and smoothed him out. And even when they are not together he feels 'She is my orbit. She is my central point. She grounds me. It is important to me that I have something to orbit. Is she a sun or a moon? I don't know. Nothing stands still. It all moves.'
He speaks with a constant wistfulness, just like his songs are never in straightforward 4/4 time. His songs never conclude. They haunt.
He is based mostly in New York because his youngest son Giacomo, 16, goes to school there.
'Trudie is based there and I circle her. The circle can be huge but I have to have somewhere to think of as home and that's her. She's coming to Paris. We'll go to dinner. I haven't seen her in a month.' He exhales loudly, mournfully. 'It's hard but it keeps it juicy, it keeps it romantic. She'd be sick to death of me if I was around all the time.' Would he be sick of her? 'No,' he laughs.
Trudie Styler seems almost an idol to him. The ultimate archetype that he's always searched for. The strongest woman. The mother, the lover. 'She's pretty good at all of those, I have to say.'
He seems to enjoy the longing for her and being apart. Is that because that's how he knows how to feel love, by separation. 'Mm,' he nods and gives a jet lagged mini yawn. 'I'm not punishing myself. She does have her own orbit. She has far more jobs than I do. We orbit in tandem really. But we mentally think each other is home.'
What possessed them to do those louche pictures for Harper's Bazaar? 'That was fun! Aren't we allowed to have fun?' He smiles completely aware of how much those photos irritated. 'There was a lot of outrage and it was just a photo spread. I couldn't take it seriously.'
Did he enjoy the exhibitionist element of posing for naughty pictures with his wife? 'Yeh. We looked good,' he laughs, 'And that's what annoys other people.'
He says that their relationship changed but they both changed in complementary ways. 'I always encourage her to take on challenges and to work. That's very important to Trudie and me. I never wanted to be going back to the little woman because I'd be bored by that, but she does so many things. She's an actor, producer, she runs businesses, she edited the Big Issue the other work. She does amazing stuff, she does yoga stuff and she does it all well. She's an incredibly accomplished woman and I'm proud of her. She always steps up to a challenge.'
He tells me that the ambiguity of love means that Styler could have equally destroyed him as opposed to making him whole. I grapple with that concept.
He explains: 'A lot of relationships begin with an emotional prenuptial where you say I love you this much but not enough that I could be destroyed. That's where a lot of relationships fail. You have to take that risk. You have to give your whole self. Everything, so you could be destroyed by it, totally. And the other way too. If she leaves me, if I leave her.'
Does he ever think that could happen? 'Of course it could happen. You know life's full of surprises. We talk about stuff. We have a deep connection which we renew on a daily basis. We're not complacent about our relationship at all. It's not that we're insecure it's just that we know what the reality is. Most marriages end and end in disaster. It's unusual to have a long relationship and we have a very long relationship.' (30 years). I want to continue it.'
It's important for him to never take anything for granted. On the whole he likes to work at things, be it relationships or songs. For a long time he was devastated about the breakdown of his first marriage. He was quite undone by it and revisited that in his songs. 'it's the only thing I've ever failed at.'
Even when Sting was Gordon he worked hard, even though he knew he was a misfit in the jobs he did. He made the most out of his being a bus conductor even though being a tax officer for nine months 'was terrible. I was basically fired and never wanted to work in an office again. I'd also been on the dole, which I hated, I just couldn't do it.'
The play The Last Ship is very much about paying back. Paying tribute to where he grew up, to the people of the north east, and it works on the premise a man needs to work.
'I'm very inspired about it. More inspired than I've been perhaps for a long time. I think it's about what happens when work ends. What happens to communities and how important that is. It's about how people were ambivalent about that job. They think it was a hard job in the worst industrial conditions in Europe, and yet what they built they were very proud of. They built the biggest ships in the world in that tow and when that disappeared it was a huge thing. That's what the play is about.
'We don't make anything any more. The idea of making things with your hands is important to us, especially men. I work with my hands every night with an instrument. It's physical work. When you take that away from a community what do you replace it with. I don't know the answer, it's just that it's a terrible thing. That's the backdrop for the play, but it's also a love story, a redemption.'
A couple of months pass and I go to Newcastle. Sting has been there all week rehearsing the workshop of The Last Ship. It is performed in a tiny arts theatre near the Quayside close to where Sting first performed himself with the band Last Exit.
In recent years he's been increasingly drawn back to the north east. It started with his album If on a Winter's Night which featured traditional Northumbrian folk songs and the Northumbrian pipe player Kathryn Tickell and which he performed for a televised performance in Durham Cathedral in 2009.
As well as moving forward he's going back. His memories are very vivid ghosts. You feel the pull back in time to the way things once were.
The Last Ship is possibly Sting's greatest work. The songs heave with regret and are teased with bitter sweet nostalgia. We watch the workshop and tears roll down my face. Possibly because I too was the person who left so many people behind. One of my friends I left behind from my teenage drama group was performing on stage. He cried too. It was an evening of lost and found.
The next day we are at the Malmaison Hotel, its arch windows overlooking the bridges that define the Tyne. Sting blushes at my compliments. He's just had breakfast with Jimmy Nail who calls Sting Gordon. Does he do that to annoy him? 'Yes, a little bit. Nobody else calls me Gordon. I've known Jimmy 20 years. I didn't meet him here. Now I can't imagine the show without him. He's very excited and he loves the material and his voice is incredibly raw.'
We order espressos. Sting is wearing jeans that are fetchingly fitted around the thighs in a heavy blue grey denim (Balmain) and the same very soft cashmere jumper. You feel his hard muscles underneath the squishy wool.
'I was brought up in the shadow of the shipyards and I've often wondered why I was a witness to that growing up. I was fascinated and terrified by it at the same time and wondered where would I fit in. I didn't really know. That was the landscape of my dreams if you like. It was very freeing for me to put myself there and it not be about me. Writing songs for other characters to sing freed me up and I feel very fertile because of that. You can get paralysed and I can get in my own way. I haven't written a song for a long time and in the past year I've written 25 songs. I think you have to write when you feel like writing. When something needs to come out. it's not the kind of job where you just turn it on.'
The idea cemented in his head after he read about a shipyard closing in Poland and a priest began to raise money for a charity to start building ships again to give the men something to do and their dignity back.
'It struck me as Homeric - an exciting crazy idea that actually happened. I thought if I welded that inspiration to the story of my town to make it more allegory than history it might work and there'd be a good message, a universal message that people need to work.
'One of the most depressing times in my life was signing on on a Wednesday afternoon. I felt demoralised and defeated. I couldn't bear it. I understand what it's like not to have work. I was still a musician. I always had that. Not to have work, it destroys people.'
The story is set in the early Thatcher years that saw the closing of the mining and shipbuilding industries and the north east took that hard because that's where its heart was.
'If you have no work and you don't know what's happening next where's the future? How can we look after our kids? The economic system is falling apart. What do we have left? We have community.'
In the north east there's always been a strong sense of community. It is that community that seems to urge Sting back. 'The other night a bloke in the audience said there's something special about Newcastle. There's a spiritual connection with this place. It's not a dewy-eyed sentimental nostalgia. This town is genuinely lovable, with this town that has its own river and football team. I don't know another region of England that has this feeling. So coming back having been away so long I think I see it more clearly. That relationship with my childhood. It's very much a homecoming for me which is important.'
He's been walking around the city, the streets that he grew up in, navigating a careful path between what's lost and what still remains. 'I keep finding old enclaves of old Newcastle, and then an awful shopping centre, that thing that T. Dan Smith built. Then you walk down Grey Street and it's such an elegant Regency city. It's a beautiful city that's had the heart ripped out of it by people with no class.'
Sting always knew he would leave Newcastle. There wasn't much scope to earn his living as a musician there. Not then anyway, although he worked touring schools with a group called Stage Coach and performing in the theatre. 'My professional music career was started in the theatre, so this was a kind of coming back to it.'
Sting loves a circular story. He loves nostalgia, but at the same time he says again, 'I like forward momentum.' And yet here we are, back where we started, and examining where we came from.
There is an ache in The Last Ship that is palpable as fiction and fact are melded together. His leading character is called Gideon. Both Gideon and Gordon had a conflicted relationship with their father and did not attend their father's funeral. 'Well I don't think he could.' He couldn't, or Sting couldn't? A deep sigh. 'Who knows. It's a very strange psychology, you know.'
Sting was on tour. His character was at sea. Both running away. He shakes his head and laughs grimly. 'You know, by not mourning in the correct way people normally mourn you are condemned to mourn them much, much more extravagantly.
'I visited my parents before they died and I said as much as I could say, but didn't go through the ritual of a funeral service and I regret it.' It's a regret that he has at last expressed through music. Her started to reexamine his relationship with his father when he wrote the song Ghost Story - it's very powerful. You thought your father never loved you or understood you and after he died you realised too late he did all along. 'My father didn't beat me up but it was a difficult relationship.'
Men of his father's generation came back from the warwith bruised machismo and fear. 'They couldn't express their emotions. I have this theory that people born between the wars have this bogus condition, to be allured to the military. The generation before was massacred. The generation that followed was also to be massacred. That hardness was something that was misinterpreted. Yes, my dad had sentimental moments.'
His father died of prostate cancer. Death and dying slips in and out of the lilting, waltzing lyrics to the songs. Does he work out his fears of mortality in his lyrics so that he doesn't have to think about it?
'No. I deal with it all the time. I don't live in mortal fear. That's what being 60 is about. You have to deal with the idea it's finite. You have a certain number of summers left. You don't know how many but you've lived most of your life. You could be morbid about that. You could also say whatever's left I'm going to make it count. Every moment is precious and that's good, it enriches life rather than reduces it.'
Sting is living in dog years, making every moment count and for some reason this makes me cry again. He holds my hand, 'It's alright, it's what we're designed to do. You can cry,' he says. And then he's quiet. 'I walked on stage last night and I feel incredibly privileged. It can't be forever. If it was forever that would be torture.' He doesn't look his age, that's why it's difficult.
'I don't feel my age. When I say 60 it feels odd, but there it is.' I examine his face. There is no saggy skin, no bags, laugh lines not wrinkles. 'I'm fortunate.' Does he do facials? 'No, never. I've never had a facial. I've got blackheads.'
The espressos arrive, but there is an energy, a feeling of being alive that is beyond caffeine. 'I'm very excited for this. It's freed me up. Writing songs for other people to sing, I can express more than I would for myself. I can use my craft without Sting getting in the way. I've been paralysed for the past seven or eight years, you know. This whole idea of Sting is in the way of the work, people don't listen to it any more. They've got this media creation which is partly my fault. I think I took part in the creating of something which is not really me.'
The real Sting is feeling restored.
'The songs have been flowing out of me. I only wrote one or two for the Winter album. I haven't felt the compulsion that I felt recently with this project. I feel relieved and happy to be allowing it to flow.'
Is that why he was touring so much, he was running from the songs? 'Well, the blank page is very difficult…. I'm a travelling musician and that's my job. It's like being a sailor and my family are assimilated to that. They live a peripatetic life. It keeps it all alive and sparky.'
His daughter Coco came up to see the workshop and the Back to Bass show at the Sage, Gateshead. He sang for two and a half hours straight and by the end the crowd, including my mother, were all singing Message In A Bottle with him.
Is he closest to Coco? He pauses. 'She really wanted to see the show. She's very like me. And so is Joe. I suppose because they're both musicians.'
He never felt a natural father. He grew closer to his children as they became more interesting to him as adults with whom you could have a conversation. 'I've never been an ideal father because of my job and because of the way I was parented. It didn't give me any clues of how to do it. But my kids seem to have survived that and they are all great, balanced and hard working.'
Giacomo is still at school. Is he artistic? 'He claims that he is not. He claims that he doesn't want to be creative because it's not a real job. He says that he wants to be a policeman.' Deep intake of breath. 'Okay, fine. We need policemen. I think he's the most eccentric and probably the most artistic of all of us. I think he will happily go the other way, this is his rebellion against a family of actors and musicians, which I can understand.'
I heard that he was dyslexic? 'The whole family is on the spectrum, although I'm not dyslexic, we are on the spectrum of weird.'
He is preparing to take his tour on to London then Europe. The musical will workshop again in New York. As yet he doesn't know where it will premiere - Newcastle or New York.
The romance in The Last Ship is about the reconnection with the girl left behind and I wondered in real life did Sting promise someone he'd come back? He bows his head and says to his jumper, 'Yeh, of course I did.' Where is she now? 'Not on the planet. I can't talk about it. It's a long long time ago.' He bows his head into his jumper.
Another tragedy, another ghost? 'Yes, all of them are ghosts. This town is full of ghosts. This is a very rich environment for me spiritually.' He looks up like he is actually seeing a ghost. The past has such a pull for the man who loves pulling forward. Then he laughs. 'Maybe there was more than one girl.' He looks down and fumbles. 'A lot of people, a lot of dead people around. A lot of musicians I've worked with. A lot of ghosts, friends, close ones. You get survivor guilt. Why did I survive?'
Perhaps because he's got plenty to say? He nods solemnly. 'I've got plenty to say. I hope so, anyway.'

I'm waiting for Sting to finish his yoga class. He's teaching yoga to the string section of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra who are performing with him on his Symphonicities tour; orchestral reworkings of Sting and Police songs.

We are backstage at the concert hall in Rome. His dressing room is done out with oriental throes, silk embroidered pillows and candles. Soon a clouded pint glass containing macrobiotic soup will be delivered.

The yoga class was sweaty. Sting has just showered when he greets me. He is in jeans pulling on a cashmere knit.
Sting divides people completely and he knows it. Never more so than with his Symphonicities album. It has been condemned as syrupy and described by one critic as "an hour long tantric wank."

I must confess I come down on the other side. I love Sting. I love his yoga body, his sentimental psyche, his haunting voice, his melancholy, the fact that he lost his virginity in Tynemouth Priory near the spot that I almost did…

I also have to confess he's been very kind. When my father was in a nursing home with Alzheimers disease my mother wanted to put up family pictures. There were none of me because I hate having my picture taken. She found one of me and Sting from an old newspaper article. My father thought that Sting was a family relative. Maybe even a son.

When my mother and I went to see Sting perform in Durham Cathedral last year as soon as he heard the story he insisted on doing a full set of pictures with my mother so my father would not think his 'son' was neglecting his mother. When my mother went to see Symphonicities earlier this year it was the only few hours of happiness she has had since my father's death. For me the Symphonicities show is kind of magical. I sang along. Danced even.

Rome is its last date with the Royal Philharmonic. "I'm a little sad," says Sting. As sad as is possible after the endorphin rush of the yoga which he does every day before the show.
Isn't he at least a little bit relieved to be getting back to normal life? "I'm not sure what normal life is. I'll see Trudie tomorrow and that will be great, but I could tour this way forever with this orchestra. The people are exceptional musicians but they are also very nice and we are completely integrated. I can't imagine when I've been happier on tour."

Is he bothered by the extreme opinions that people have had of the tour? "It does sound a bit of a cliché, Sting with a symphony orchestra, but anyone who has listened will see the arrangements are out of the ordinary. And the musicians are playing with precision, passion and love. I'm very relaxed in front of an orchestra, I don't even sweat. I sing for three hours. I could do another three hours every night.

"I have learnt I'm in the public domain, you can't please everyone. Some people can't stand me. Some people think I'm God's gift. Maybe I'm somewhere in the middle."
Actually Sting is never the middle ground. He's always extreme in every possible sense of the word. The kind of man who will die at a soppy film but not at his parents' death. His songs are emotional, quite female, and yet physically he's very masculine, strong. In some ways hard, in some ways soft. Emotionally articulate when song writing, but probably not great at expressing feelings. His New Zealand chef brings in a plate of plain rice and steamed fish. "You eat no sugar, no salt, no potatoes, no bread… but I like a bar of chocolate now and then and a bottle of wine." Even his eating embraces extremes. "I sin once a day, that's important." With chocolate or wine? "Or both," he says with a kind of naughty wink.

Of course some people think that it's a sin that he ever opens his mouth. They find the whole pop star wants to save the world's rain forests odiously hypocritical. He has campaigned for deforestation for over 20 years and planted over 100,000 trees to offset his carbon footprint. I'm not sure what he was trying to achieve by agreeing to be quizzed by Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight last year. Paxman mauled him throwing charges of hypocrisy and implying naivety.

Does he wish he'd never done it? "Well, I wasn't prepared for it. I was told by the producers I was going to speak about one thing and then I was ambushed. It was just a cheap pop star hypocrite bullshit instead of what I wanted to talk about. I saw the film they made before the interview (of Sting rock star fabulous with the indigenous Indians of the Amazon rainforest making a trip back there to coincide with his album release and being accused of cashing in) and I thought I can take this earpiece out and they can have an empty chair, but I'm a good soldier. I knew Paxman was going to have a go at me, it's what he does."

Would you do it again? "No. Not Newsnight. It wasn't fair." There's no bravado here. He accepts the debacle. "It was naïve of me. I was talked into it but I didn't prepare myself." He shakes his head. "But I didn't lose my temper. That would have been the wrong thing to do."
Does he often lose his temper? "No, I don't actually." Indeed, all the discomfort is going on in the inside. It's released on stage and in songs. "I feel very much myself when I'm on stage. I feel in the moment, not thinking about the past or the future or anything apart from singing those notes. It's very freeing. I feel I was made to do this job. I do it well and people go away happy."

Has he revised his ideas about loathing X Factor since Geordie Joe won it last year? "I still think it's exploitation. These kids are fodder for the tabloids. I'm not a fan. These kids are vaulted into a situation where they are national figures overnight. They are conditioned to want it. The fame was slow enough for me to navigate it a bit better."

How does he navigate fame. "I don't think of myself as a celebrity. I hope I don't behave like a famous person." Sting has been a famous person for such a long time he doesn't know any other life. Born in Wallsend near Newcastle, his father was a milkman but always would talk of the time he was a soldier doing National Service in Germany. His mother was a romantic who he once said "needed a much wider life to be who she was." Perhaps yearning and discontent was in his DNA. He's now 59 and feels he's had many lifetimes.

There was the life in Newcastle where he was a teacher and played in bands, and then there was "becoming a rock star and surviving that. Becoming an older person in the music business and trying to figure out a way of doing that."What will he do after the tour? "No idea." Is that freeing or worrying? "Both. It makes me anxious of course. At the same time it's a good place for creativity. It's only out of anxiety that I ever produce anything worthwhile. The music industry is an industry which is shrinking and no one is quite sure what the future model is so for me to go out with a rock band would have been counterproductive."

Would you ever do a rock tour again? "Yes, if I want to. If my instinct tells me." Right now he's thinking about new songs. "I need the blank page and I need the panic. I'm not hungry to be adored or have approval. I don't need that. I'm curious to see what I can produce at my age."
And will curiosity grow into panic? "Ha, ha, or panic
will grow into curiosity. I'm intrigued what I'll be able to do. It gets harder and at the same time it's a wonderful challenge."

I notice a few times he adds the caveat "at my age". Does he think as his age at being a limit? "Not until recently. I was 59 this month and it's a long time to have lived through." Pause. "I don't feel like I'm 59." He doesn't look like he's 59. He's got good skin, piercing eyes and the yoga body that helps to maintain him.

Both his parents died of cancer before they were 60. Does he think about that? "Yes, of course. Mortality." At this point a tofu chocolate pudding arrives and seems to punctuate the moment. He's doing his best to stay alive.

"I am quite old though. Most of the orchestra could be my kids. It's an interesting dichotomy between what people think of as being old and how I feel, which is not old at all. I feel I've got a lot still to learn. I'd like to be smarter, I'd like to be a better husband, a better father, a better band leader, a better friend. I'm a pretty lousy friend because I'm away so much and I'm not good on the phone and I can't bear the Skype thing."

This comes all the way from his north east roots. Geordie men in particular are not good at the phone. It's far too spontaneous for them. "I like lettery sorts of emails. I don't just say what's up. I like old fashioned Dear."

Is that what you write to Trudie (Styler)? "No I call Trudie every day." You couldn't get away with not. "No. but it's nice. We have a laugh. She's in Colorado today doing another yoga DVD." Do they do yoga together? "No. she's far too fit for me. She's an amazon. Very occasionally we will do it together. We are a bit competitive but she wins all the time. I just take my hat off to a superior form.

"I'm very comfortable with the idea of women being superior in many different fields. The way they navigate the world is something I admire. I'll say the standard misogynist thing. I don't like women drivers very much but I prefer to live in a world run by women. All this striving for machismo power it's fucked up. We'd be better off if it was run as a family. I'd be happy being a sex slave in that kind of society… and write the odd song."

He really does have a romantic idea of women. "All the women in my life have satisfied the various archetypes of my mother - the wife, the lover, the mistress, the unattainable female mystery."
This makes him feel he can't take anything for granted with Trudie. "We've been together 30 years and luckily we've evolved in a compatible way. We're both different to what we were. I want that to continue and pray every day that it does. She might get sick of me. If she sees more of me she gets sick of me."

Does he get sick of her? "No, I don't. I love her. She's great."
So how could he be a better husband? Looking in he seems quite devoted, always talking about how Trudie completes him. "It's hard to strike a balance between having a career and being a family man." Ah, family. He's said before he didn't find parenthood easy.

"I don't have normal parent child relationships. But they all seem to have survived that whatever they went through."
What could he have done to have been a better father? "The problems they face now as adults are getting more interesting and they do come to me at times and say what do I do, so I need to be wise and available." He relates to them more as adults? "Yeh. I'm not really a kid person to be honest with you." But you've had so many, five of them? "Yeh." He dissolves into giggles. "In all honesty I wasn't a hands on daddy but I'll be a good dad."

Coco, 20, had a record out this year under the name I Blame Coco. It was well received but there were inevitable comparisons to her father. "I recognise the DNA, but if people say she sounds like her dad that writes her off. She didn't ask for my advice, she doesn't really need it. I was in Paris with her the other night. She was doing a TV show and I was the stage dad. We went to dinner and we got calls to say that on Amazon they were number 4, then number 3, then number 2. She's very sanguine about it, not full of herself."

So just who are Sting's friends that he writes yours sincerely emails to? People he grew up with? Musicians? "No, they're just people that I've had a lot in common with and have fun with." What do you need to qualify as a Sting friend? "You have to be deeply flawed like me. In fact it helps if they're slightly more flawed, then I can give good advice."

After the tour finishes he will be forced to settle in one place - New York. "Giacomo, who is 14, needs to go to school somewhere so if you have to choose a city above all others I'll choose New York. I find it very creative."

His dog Compass, a pointer, always travels with him. He has his own air miles. "He's a lovely boy. He does point at birds, but I'm not interested in shooting them. He's a very soulful dog. Without communicating verbally he'll reflect your mood back to you he cheers me up though. When I'm miserable I just take him for a run."

I think he enjoys misery. Or at least he enjoys hunger and discontent. "Contentment is a bovine concept. Cows are content eating grass. Human beings are not. We are always searching for something. I'm not smugly content, no. but at the same time there's nothing I really need except more knowledge. By that I mean more security in my beliefs. The universe is a very uncertain place. So living with that comfortably is what I seek rather than finding some system I can believe in. We have to embrace uncertainty. And mortality too. You've got to embrace that in a macabre sort of way."

With that he embraces his chocolate pudding. Takes a taste and says he'll finish it later, after the show. He's all about deferred gratification, except it gets stolen. Someone else ate Sting's chocolate pudding! But it was a really great show. All those old songs given new life. I think it might be a metaphor.

I am at breakfast at Brennan's, a big old family restaurant in the French Quarter of New Orleans. I'm sipping a brandy milk punch, their cure for a hangover from too many Hurricane cocktails the night before, and I'm supping turtle soup.
Once I get over the fact it's been made with 'hand reared turtles' I decide it's one of the greatest things that I've ever put in my mouth. Rich, intense, light and all enveloping and with a tragic heritage. It's a sort of a metaphor for the city itself.
Breakfast is a two-hour affair. Eggs with gargantuan lumps of crab follow and then bananas sautéed in butter, sugar and rum, are flambéed at the table.
By the time I head out for a day of antiquing and a visit to the bug museum where you go into rooms filled with giant butterflies I can hardly move. The bathroom attendant, an ancient black lady, dressed in a crisp white nurse's uniform sighed, 'This is New Orleans. You'll never be hungry and you'll never be lonely.' And so far that seemed to be very true.
New Orleans is a city that has been devastated by Hurricane Katrina. Almost wiped out but through the kindness of others and the strength of itself it's been able to rebuild. Part of its rehabilitation has been a burgeoning music scene.
The city that was built on blues and jazz has been rebuilt on the strength of the horn. The Soul Rebels are one such band. (They are about to headline at the London Jazz Festival). Some of the members' entire homes were wiped out and they lost everything. Somehow they have emerged stronger.
Julian Omari Gosin, 26, drives me through the city down to the fêted 9th Ward. It's been rebuilt with solar-powered energy saving housing built by Brad Pitt - he helped with the finance and the architecture. They are stark in shape, pink, yellow, blue in colour, and with none of the fancy French colonial influence of the rest of the city. Back near the French Quarter there are giant houses that look like wedding cakes. 'These were slave houses,' says Julian, matter of fact.
For a city that was built on slavery there's a weird absence of prejudice and class structure. Brad Pitt and Angeline Jolie can walk through the city without being tracked by paparazzi. Nobody cares about status. People care about being alive. It's a paradox because the city is also famous for its dead. You walk the same streets that Interview With A Vampire was shot. You can buy a voodoo doll at the many voodoo emporiums. No one seems ill wishing. Even the bums have a certain charm. They've seen it all. They accept their fate. They may be homeless but they can be philosophical.
Not that you see bums in the French Quarter. You do see fortunetellers and old ladies who live for the price of a voodoo spell. The main streets in the French Quarter are Bourbon Street, Royal Street, Decatur Street and Frenchman Street. They are elegant streets, filled with elegant old-fashioned restaurants and antique stores. On Royal Street there are many ornate French colonial style antique shops, eccentric chandeliers, quirky cufflinks and vintage gold. Moss Antiques was my absolute favourite with its selection of hand-painted enameled gold and excessively beautiful home ware.
It's a city for walking. Perhaps that's why there are so many Thai foot massage shops, as common as mani-pedi premises on Sunset Boulevard.
Streetcars still run through the city. In fact you could take in the leafy oak trees and drive by the parks. The Treme neighbourhood is a district just north of the French Quarter and has come into the spotlight recently because of the various HBO series.
Every Thursday The Soul Rebels are at Le Bon Temps Roule club on Magazine Street, named after the bar in the movie The Big Easy, 1970s looking building which gets packed to the roof when they play. Julian and other band members started off in marching bands. There are many churches and funeral homes in New Orleans. Life and death side by side. And that's how they play. It's a mixture of tradition, of jazz, of hip-hop. It's a fusion of everything in their life that's inspired them or hurt them.
On their album Unlock Your Mind they do a version of Sweet Dreams. It's very powerful and seems to capture the vibe of the city - bitter sweet.
On Bourbon Street every building is a jazz bar. Not all of it great music, but all of it passionate. The Rebirth Brass Band - it's traditional but also modern - plays at the Maple Leaf. Tipitina's is another famous landmark music venue. It is on the corner of Napoleon Street. It is a music mecca. Many jazz greats have played there and still do.
Church is a big event, so Sunday brunch at Lil Dizzy's café should be hit before the church comes out. There's also the Golden Feather Mardi Gras Indian restaurant there. And at the back of Congo Square you'll find the building that housed the J&M recording studio where Little Richard and Ray Charles recorded. Catch the Charles Avenue streetcar for an overview of the new trendy neighbourhoods.
Audubon Park Zoo is opposite an endless array of vast mansions. It's a research zoo. After Jefferson Avenue you find Magazine Street with a huge array of boutiques, art shops, jewellery shops and coffee shops. It's the one place in the universe where Starbucks has not taken over. New Orleans residents prefer their own local coffee shops - there's CC's and PJ's and instead of Submarine or McDonald's you'll have Po'boy shops. They originated when the streetcar workers were on strike and to support them the sandwich shops would give them French bread with French fries and gravy because they were poor boys. Now Po'boy sandwiches are filled with oysters, shrimp, roast beef. But they still have the French bread.
Igor's Buddha Belly is a laundromat bar and grill so you can do your laundry, shoot pool and get a drink. The Neville Brothers started there.
The Soul Rebels have become ambassadors for New Orleans. Most of the band had been evacuated after the storm. Erion Williams, saxophone player and MC, remembers the night they came back after the storm. 'A generator had been hooked up and there was cold beer. I'll never forget the drive from Baton Rouge. It was in complete darkness. No street lights, no power, no nothing. I made it down Magazine Street, got to the club, I walk in and it's packed. It was a crazy night because people hadn't seen each other for so long, and the band needed to lift their spirits as well.'
It's as if that's what they're still doing. Lifting spirits and rebuilding houses. Julian is still rebuilding his house,. It has been a long process. It was completely devastated. No one had realised the impact of the storm. He had left carrying 'just jeans, a few T-shirts and my CD player.'
In New Orleans everyone does not have an iPod. People are poor and they don't seem to embrace technology the way the rest of the world does. My iPhone broke and Julian took it to be repaired at the one phone shop which is at the back of a supermarket.
My friend who was born in the south recommended that I go to Galatoires on Bourbon Street if I wanted to see the real south. The real south is very old school. Very nice. Properly dressed gentlemen offering cocktails and turtle soup for nicely dressed ladies. They don't take reservations so to get in speedily you have to look good - dress old fashioned smart. Even movie stars wait in line and won't necessarily be seated before a charming smile. Downstairs is chicest. It's pale cream and colonial in its décor but it's not stuffy, it's bustly. In a city where everything changes very quickly Galatoires is a piece of history. In a city that's been devastated and been rebuilt it's interesting to have a part of that that remains untouched. It's famous for it's shrimp remoulade and oysters en brochette. I ate a seafood okra gumbo. Okra is big in the south. The slaves brought it from Africa. I like to think of it as drinking slave soup.
The Soul Rebels took me to The Praline Connection on Frenchmen Street for a huge dinner. It's all plain white tablecloths and soul food. It was as if a sack of fried shrimp in thick batter had been emptied on to my plate. It came with cornbread that was sweet and moist and "mac n cheese" that was sharp and creamy and collard greens which had a mystical way of feeling extremely filling and unhealthy. The boys had gumbo which is different in every restaurant. Sometimes spicy, sometimes thick, sometimes fishy, sometimes meaty. I suppose that's why people are endlessly fascinated by it. It's the soup equivalent of the cocktail.
Next door is a shop that sells praline based confectionary. Something else that seems to have been invented in New Orleans along with the cocktail. You can imagine someone in New Orleans inventing the cocktail; someone needing an altered state so quickly that they like to combine as many possible alcohols in one drink and disguise them in sweetness. That seems to readily translate to the hurricane cocktails that were pink and long and sweet that I sampled further down Frenchmen Street at the Blue Nile. It's a music venue mostly showcasing new talent.
Also on Frenchmen Street is one of the strangest Japanese restaurants ever - Yuki Izakaya. Imagine combining the cuisine and culture of minimalist Japan with maximalist New Orleans. You get Japanese soups that are incredibly hearty, curry on French fries and sushi that has a swamp feel. You also get sake cocktails. Imagine sake, rum, green tea and pineapple all together. They call it a Green Lagoon.
The cocktail is quite an important metaphor. New Orleans like to mix everything up - black, white, rich, poor, life, death, brass, funk…
The city is very proud of Trombone Shorty. Julian and Troy Trombone Shorty went to the school for musically gifted children. Troy was taken under the wing of U2 and Lenny Kravitz and singled out as a new superstar. He has a blend of distinctive brass, very modern and cool, and seems to be constantly on the US talk show circuit. Both The Soul Rebels and Trombone Shorty know the capabilities of New Orleans and the power of music.
When I meet Trombone Shorty he's a tiny delicate man with huge charisma. He describes how he lost the bottom of his house. His family had a letter from President Bush the first which they tried to save. Everything else was just ruined.
'And the swamp smell was terrible. We had to put on masks. We felt sick. A lot of local people got wiped away. They could never come back. Music opened doors, even for those who didn't have a fan base. We all tried to help each other as much as we could. Everything that happened to me I deal with, every emotion, in my music.' And he manages to make you feel that.
I stayed at Hotel Monteleone. The walls were pale yellow and cream striped. The walls seemed to talk. The dead are buried in crypts above ground because New Orleans is only a few inches above sea level and that does seem to make a difference. It's as if they walk around with you in the streets. The hotel is a literary landmark boasting that Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams and William Faulkner not only stayed there but wrote there. Every one of the staff seemed to be exceptionally informed ad new everything about everybody. Knowledge forms the base of their charm and also they are non-judgmental. It's a city of possibility. Everything can be done with ease and without spite.
Downstairs within the hotel is one of the most beautiful bars. It's called the Carousel Bar and it is built from an old fairground carousel. You actually revolve as you sip martinis giving the impression that you are drunk before you start. The carousel is old brass and painted flamboyantly. The cocktails are playful, traditional and heavenly. As you circle around you feel you are in a circus for adults.
There is interesting shopping. Trashy Diva on Charles Street mixes lingerie with cocktail ware. The kind of clothes you wear if you're not sure if you want to be in or out of bed. If you are inspired by New Orleans cuisine, Kitchen Witch on Toulouse Street is a vintage inspired kitchen store.
Christine DeCuir of the Visitors Bureau took me to dinner at The Palace Café Restaurant on Canal Street. We had an amazing array of food that was both old-fashioned and modern. We had Cajun cosmopolitan which involved rum as well as vodka, which was strangely warming as well as uplifting. We had oysters in rosemary cream and herb breadcrumbs, giant creole shrimp and rib eye the size of an armchair and as soft. The blue cheese salad had grilled peaches and candied pecans and a whiskey vinaigrette. It too is typical of the rebirth.
Christine told me that when the city was being evacuated she hadn't taken it seriously. By the time she got home to collect some belongings she and her family could hardly drive over the bridge. Old people and women with small babies were begging for a ride. 1,200 were drowned, including an entire old people's home.
When she eventually got back to show journalists around the devastated areas they were all crying. There was nothing. It was a nuclear waste ground. Eventually she got to her house, found furniture floating in the water. Somehow she didn't cry.
'Some people were devastated by this and never got over it. Others it was just the turning point they needed. It was the opposite and they made a better life.


- For further information contact: New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau. Phone: 001 504 566 5090

- The Soul Rebels Brass Band are performing at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, on November 16 as part of the London Jazz Festival.
- Trombone Shorty's album For True is out now.

- Hotel Monteleone, 214 Royal Street, New Orleans, LA 70112. Phone: 001 504 523 3341

Susan Boyle is not afraid to look right at you. It's a little disarming at first. As her brown eyes pierce me she's searching for the connection.
Communication is important to her.
It's what drives her, because her whole life has been a miscommunication. She has been misjudged, misunderstood, labelled, bullied.
When she sings that voice is ladled with not only what she's suffered, but a plea to be liked, to be loved because all her life one way or another she's been deemed unlovable. More of that later.
She's sparkly-eyed in her sparkly top. You tell her she looks great. She fights with you. She cannot take a compliment. She still lives in the council house she grew up in an shared where she looked after her parents until they died in Blackburn, West Lothian. She now sleeps under her Donny Osmond blanket in what used to be her mother's room.
She has another house, half a mile away, that is new and modern and has a marbelled top kitchen. She calls it 'the posh house' and that's what the doormat outside it says. She spends time there but she doesn't really live there.
'SuBo is a bit of a tomboy and she lives in the council house. She fights with everybody. Susan Boyle doesn't fight with anybody. She lives in the posh house and she's a lady. She rarely gets stressed.' Then she gives a SuBo chortle that's both fiery and warm.
'I've got a temper alright. I'm fiery as hell. Do you want the long list of things that make me lose my temper? The number one that makes my blood boil, the one that really puts me overboard is if someone isn't telling the truth to me and I know about it. I like honesty and I like real communication.'
This maybe comes from a life being protected from what her parents thought would hurt her. She never knew where the reality was. And now she can't believe her own success. She doesn't grasp it or understand it.
There are various estimates of her worth between £11 and £18 million. It could be more. She is the fastest selling global female artist and the only artist since The Beatles to have her first two albums go to number one in the US and the UK. The YouTube of her Britain's Got Talent performance of I Dreamed A Dream has been viewed over 300 million times.
She had been rejected and abandoned all her life. She was an overnight global phenomenon. That was confusing. And when she went on not to win Britain's Got Talent she panicked that it was all being taken away again, had a meltdown and had to go The Priory for two days.
After a lifetime of 50 years of not believing in herself, unsurprisingly she still finds it a struggle. She thinks it's all going to go away. 'It's scary because how do you maintain your standard. It's too much to take in. Only this morning I felt overwhelmed, I didn't know if I'd be here. It's a lot for me to take in. I haven't had a lot of happiness.'
As is the case with people who have spent their life longing for something when they get it they don't know what to do with that longing and agitation. They are as frightened of success as they are of failure.
'Yes,' she nods her head in agreement, but a little sad. It's as if she feels I'm telling her off. I tell her I think it's deeper than just that. Her whole psyche has been rejected for so long that now she has been accepted she can't quite believe it's real.
Her eyes ignite. "You've summed it up in one. You are always waiting for someone to come along. You are always waiting for this, and then you think they're going to forget you.'
I tell her she could never be unforgettable. People everywhere identify with her. Her fans in America wear red scarves because she did as a symbol of solidarity that they too have suffered and would like one day to triumph. People love her. 'Well they don't know the real me,' says Susan gruffly.
But that's just it. The uniqueness of SuBo is that her whole soul, everything she's ever felt, confused by, rejected by, or suffered from or longed for is in her voice. She would sing at her local social club, her staunchly Catholic parents fretting that she would be in a room full of drink, and she was never praised for her performance, yet she kept on going. She auditioned for various television shows 12 times until her Britain's Got Talent moment.
'You'll See on my first album is about me getting my own back on people. I'm still doing that. I'm not a vengeful person, honestly I'm not.'
She certainly has a right to enjoy feeling a little smug. She still lives in the same town as her tormentors. She was bullied relentlessly. She was thrown in the nettles, her gym bag hidden so she'd be punished by the teacher, laughed at, mocked until she cried. One girl stubbed out cigarettes on her.
'She used to try to make me cry and blubber. At school I used to be hyperactive which meant I cried easily. I had a slight disability.'
When she says hyperactive, disability, what does she actually mean? 'Em, that I was vulnerable. Easily annoyed. And showed my feelings. I was Miss Piggy.'
Isn't that just being hypersensitive? 'Yes, but I used to drive my parents mad. And this disability label was put on me, very unfairly. That was going on since I was one-year-old.'
Much has been made of Susan Boyle and her deprivation of oxygen at birth and how that was supposed to have created disabilities. 'They were not mental, they were physical.' For so many years, all throughout her childhood, her parents protected her sensitivity by saying it was a disability when in fact her sensitivity and her empathy is a rare quality.
'I was protected in cotton wool. They thought they were doing the right thing. They called me touchy.' This is the moment where I want to cry. Touchy is a Scottish and Geordie expression for a person who feels too much. It is a critical word and my Auntie Tiger used to yell at me that I was touchy until I cried. And suddenly like a woman in a red scarf I feel I am Susan Boyle.
She sees a comfort in that. 'At school I used to faint a lot. And that was another reason I was bullied. It's something I've never talked about. I had epilepsy. People in the public eye don't have things like that. For all my childhood they would say epilepsy is to do with mental function and that's what people would say to me. And now I realise it's not. I was up against all those barriers. It wasn't easy. My hair is snowy white underneath this,' she laughs, one of her uncomfortable chortle laughs. She tells me that she's got false teeth as well. It's a comfort zone thing for her to put herself down before anyone else does.
She looks much slimmer than she does on TV. Or maybe she's been on a diet? 'It's Spanks.'
If you ask her how her life has changed since her success she says repeatedly, 'I wouldn't call it success. I call it luck.'
In many ways she doesn't want to acknowledge her success because she doesn't want to acknowledge change. 'I have insecurity that my friends won't be my friends after a while. I don't sleep easily if I think that. That's why I don't sleep easily at the posh house. The council house is my mother's house. She died five years ago and all of her energy is still in that house. It's my comfort zone. My mother said look after my house and look after my cat Pebbles and that's what I did.
'Pebbles is looked after by a lady called Pam in London because of my travelling. That's the promise I made to my mother and you don't break promises like that. I feel she's still there. I've actually seen her there. I don't know how you feel about people coming back?' She's testing the water in case I don't believe in that kind of stuff. But as soon as I tell her I've seen ghosts she continues.
'She wasn't troubled. I think she was letting me know she was alright. She wasn't angry or upset. I wasn't frightened. There was a lovely smell. Perhaps it was of my mum's perfume, I'm not sure. I used to think she'd abandoned me when she died. Maybe she was telling me she hadn't.'
She and her mother had an extremely close relationship. SuBo felt loved possibly for the only time. But her mother was often upset and anxious. She says, 'She died anxious.'
Her mother had worried how she would cope on her own. She was the baby of the family, the youngest of nine, born when her mother was 47-years-old. Her mother always worried, and that instilled in Susan the feeling that she could not cope on her own. If they were watching the television and Susan would casually remark 'Do you think I could sing on TV?' her mother would say 'Yes, but you're not ready yet.'
It was two years after she died that Susan passed the audition for Britain's Got Talent. Perhaps she had been ready for it all her life. A voice like that is a God-given talent. She may be ready for another cat. 'I'm thinking of getting another cat. If it's an orange cat I'm going to call it Andy after my manager, and if it's a black cat with big green eyes I'm going to call it Simon.'
The word Simon makes her give a mini-wiggle as she says 'Simon is sex on legs.' She also thought Piers was really handsome. One wonders just how many men she has been exposed to in her life.
Does she still sleep with Donny Osmond every night? 'You saucy devil. Yes. He is on the bed cover.' She talks about what a lovely man he is too.
Wouldn't she like a real boyfriend? 'I had a boyfriend. All that never being kissed stuff is an absolute lie. He kissed me for God's sake, he kissed me.
'My dad didn't like him. He said he wasn't right for me. The sensible answer to your question would be I'll know when the right man comes along. In many ways it was a narrow escape. I was in love with him but he made someone else pregnant soon after. My dad decided that that particular boy was not for me and I was too immature to handle a relationship.'
How old was she? For the first time she looks embarrassed. 'You're not going to believe this but I was 25. Maybe people grow up at different rates.'
Maybe your parents were severely over protective? She nods in a way that she sees it and she doesn't see it. At the same time as being criticised for being immature from the age of 18 she'd been counselling teenagers and other young people who'd suffered from depression and other issues. She was deemed mature enough for that.
'Yes. It was important for me to prove that I was. I wanted to show people I could do it. I was good at it because I'd been there, I understood pain, and I'm a good listener. I wanted to do a psychology degree.' She mumbles and looks down. It's another thing that she felt she failed at.
She's a warm empathic person and is lonely. 'In a TV interview I said that maybe someone with one eye and one foot in the grave would be good because I thought that would be the only type of person I could get. I'm not sure if it's possible for somebody my age to have a long-term relationship. I don't want to be hurt again, it's as simple as that.'
But if she could get over that? 'Boys used to really make fun of me so I would like someone who was kind and someone who was not irresponsible and someone who would treat me like a woman.'
Lots has been written about her living on a monthly allowance of £300 or £500, suggesting that some kind of exploitation is involved. It's more psychologically alarming than that. 'I asked to live on an allowance. I think it will keep me grounded.'
I think she has a serious problem accepting success. 'I worry that it will go away. I don't want to be going out buying Ferraris. Last week I bought myself a TV. It cost £700. My management are always telling me, "Spend money. Treat yourself." To me £700 is a lot of money.'
Actually, it's not. 'My parents would never have had enough money coming in to buy a £700 TV, so at least it's a slight change I've made there. And I'd like to give some money towards a project locally, a kind of acting school. I'd really like to do that.'
She loves Scotland, although Scotland never loved her. She's enjoyed trips to America. She took a friend with her recently. 'On the whole I've found Americans very kind.'
In Scotland she's still living near her two main bullies, although one of them is now a nurse. 'I like to go shopping locally, although not for designer clothes. I wouldn't spend my money on that. I do like perfume, Chanel No. 5. That feels classy to me. 'My biggest problem is I feel lonely. I feel lonely at night. Everybody died and left me by myself. I always had a fear of being alone and now I am alone. It's a very real fear.
'There was one period within a few years where everybody died. My dad, my uncle, my sister, then my mum. It's as if I was working with a few building blocks and those building blocks were all scattered and I had to find them one by one.'
How do you keep hope in your head? 'Nobody would give me a chance with employment. I'd worked in the kitchens of the college and helping the elderly in the hospital, but only bits and pieces. When I first went for Britain's Got Talent I had such a feeling of failure and I feel that's still part of me. It's hard when that's been the pattern of your life, people rejecting you and failure. It's hard for me to believe those patterns have been broken. That's why I live in the council house. It's my bubble.'
Her comfort zone is also her torture zone. She feels secure by having the same neighbours shouting at one another. As much as all these things holds her back, these things make her who she is.'
Can she try to believe the pattern is broken and that she is loved, not rejected? 'I can try, it's hard. But I'm trying.'
There are so many contradictions in the Susan Boyle psyche. She's been disappointed and hurt so much she fears it so badly yet within her there is enormous courage and enormous fight.
She still has the gold lace dress that she wore for Britain's Got Talent. 'I think I've kept it to remind me of where I've come from and how far I've come.'
These days she doesn't have to wear the frumpy gold dress or have bad frizzy hair and an uneven skin tone. Why does she want to be reminded of it? 'I don't know. Maybe I should get rid of it. Perhaps I could auction it for a charity that's anti-bullying. In fact I like that idea.' And she laughs. This time there's a little triumph.

His eyes are a restful melting brown. He sits tensely in his stiff backed sofa in a Japanese minimalist hotel in Amsterdam. Exhausted from an overnight flight he looks like he needs a fluffy pillow.
He's here to receive a movie award and talk to me about his portrayal of the world's most seductive animated cat - Puss - full name Puss In Boots, who first appeared in Shrek as an outlaw cat and whose solo movie has been in preparation since 2003.
Banderas takes a forbidden cigarette, American Spirit, looks at it longingly and decides to smoke in the non-smoking hotel room. A small sneaky naughty smile as he pulls on his cigarette. His eyes dart from side to side, large and wide. It's as if you are talking to Puss himself.
Was Puss based on him? Was he drawn to look like Antonio? Puss In Boots director Chris Miller, who also directed Shrek 3, says, "I've told Antonio it's very difficult to tell the difference between the two of them. The lines have blurred."
A chief animator created Puss as a Latin cat who dances and fights with panache and slinks about just like Banderas. The headset of Puss is all Banderas's creation.
"I think what makes him interesting is the decision to give him a voice that doesn't match his body to establish a contrast. He tries to be a little bit mysterious, but he has a sweetness. He plays games. He feels a great love for the opposite sex and he knows how to make people jealous. He can be manipulative with just his eyes…" Banderas flashes a feline stare. "I think the whole audience can identify with that because we all at some point in our lives have used that side of our character to obtain something."
His eyes now plead at mine. His mouth and nose look extremely pussycat. Manipulation is obviously something he knows well.
"He is my alter ego." I think not so alter. "I've even been wearing boots since I was 12." When he was 12 he was in Malaga Spain having his sights set on becoming a professional footballer. A knee injury a couple of years later saw the course of history change.
Pedro Almodovar's darling. Philadelphia. Iconic as Zorro. And then there was a feeling for years and years his screen magnetism was never given the right movie to catapult him to the A list. This year though he seems to have found himself again with the return to working with Almodovar in The Skin I Live In, another project that's been in the works for many years, and of course Puss.
He taps his feet like a flamenco dancer. His boots are suede. They look as if they've walked the world. They look soft and stealthy and they are not high heeled.
"These boots were made for me in Mexico. I found a fantastic studio next to where we were shooting Zorro. This man measured my feet and when I want shoes I call him." How many pairs does he have? "Only the ones I'm travelling in." He sighs with an air of someone who has lost the feeling that it is romantic to be a gypsy actor.
He has homes in Aspen, Los Angeles, and Malaga, his birthplace. Where does he feel most at home? "Malaga. That's my town. That's my place. Sometimes it's a little bit painful to go there in the way that my family are there, my friends are still there. the ones I put together production companies with. I continue to work with them and I wish I could spend more time there. But I tell you something. If I'm there more than three months I miss Los Angeles. Don't you find that sometimes we don't belong somewhere?" He says, his eyes searching for a kindred spirit. He's bored with travel, exhausted by travel. He hates planes.
"On the plane last night I asked for a mask. The guy next to me was coughing and coughing." How very Zorro of him. "No. It was over my mouth and it was white. But I had to do it." Yet the mysterious fighting spirit of Zorro is never far away. "I have the whole Zorro suit in my house in Los Angeles. Sometimes I should try wearing it when I go out. Especially in the world we're living in today…"
Does he think we need a Zorro? "We need 10,000 of them. What is happening with all this pain now. There are people in the streets who are angry. Something has to happen. I think we are realising that governments can't govern us any more. They don't rule us. I think it all started happening with the end of the towers. The fall of those towers, we were witnessing the end of civilization as we knew it. The ways in which we communicate has changed. It's almost spiritual. The web, the internet. There's something happening in the world that didn't happen before. We are acting like one big brain. The problem is that if we get in a suicidal mood the end may happen. If we get in a positive mood it will not."
I feel the world can establish alternative powers and alternative governments. That things are going to happen in parallel. If so what is the point of legality.
"All these things are possible now. I was there in Tunisia when the revolution started happening. I was making a film with James Jackanow and it all happened because of Twitter and Facebook. People connected immediately and within two weeks the people who ran the country were out." He seems to be saying that information can be spread quickly without anyone filtering it and without anyone controlling it and this gives people's passions a power that previously didn't exist. All this is strangely prophetic. We met early in the summer, long before the August riots.
The movie in Tunisia was called Black Gold, just one of the three movies he's completed back-to-back in the last year. His eyes seem heavy and tired at the mention of an exhausting year that was filled with work. "The cat, the cat… He was always there," he says in a purr that he has spent a lifetime perfecting.
Why did take so long for puss to come to the screen? "Jeffrey (Katzenberg) wanted to finish the series of Shrek and not put the cat in the middle." The Puss project has been in preparation since the character was such in the first Shrek. The plan must have been that no Shrek movie would overshadow him. Banderas shrugs.
"I learned that the projects that are supposed to be 'huge' and supposed to be 'the thing' sometimes come to nothing. You never know. That is the beauty and the craziness."
Puss is obviously going to be huge - he is seductive, funny, sweet and brave. He has a huge charisma. Banderas shakes his head. "We'll see. I wish that I would do a great movie then everything else would be easy."
He stretches out his booted legs as if expressing immense tiredness at the frustration of life. A small yawn says that he has come to terms with that. "Expectation is the mother of all frustration." For a good while Banderas's career was all about expectation. He may finally have arrived.
He has five cats: "Penny Lane, she's brownish black. Very little, very thin, very feisty. And she talks a lot, meow, meow, meow, all day long. And then we have Maxwell. He loves to be petted and caressed. He loves to be close to people. And then we have Domino. He's in Aspen and he has fantastic fur. You love to pet him. He's white and his eyes are surrounded by black circles, and he has a moustache. Betty is his sister and she has the same soft fur but brownish. And one of our caretakers has another cat, she's fat and grey and she doesn't like us."
He talks about them as if he is one of them. If he were animal what would he be? I'm expecting him to say a cat, after all he is a Leo. "No, I would like to be something that flies, a big one, an eagle. I have dreams, awake dreams about the possibility of flying. It's supernatural."
Maybe he was a bird in a past life. I mention past lives because the last time I met him it was with Shirley MacLaine. They are good friends so I imagined they would be into similar things.
"I wonder about the reincarnation the theory… that we are something more each time. Where are the new souls? Where the old souls go? Do you just become part of total consciousness?" He asks as if he would really like me to give him the answer.
Does he believe in God? is he religious? "I believe in mystery. I feel comfortable in mystery. It attracts me. Even what we were saying about reincarnation. I am religious, yes. I participate in religious ceremony in Malaga. I don't know if I participate because of the religious side or the artistic side or because of the identity of it.
"The virgins of Malaga are carried on six thrones and each throne has a cape 40 metres long in gold. I know Mary the virgin did not walk like that, but I like that way of seeing it. In fact, I love it. I feel comfortable in the mystery of it. I don't try to intellectualise it. It produces a huge emotion in me."
It was also hugely emotional to return to working with Pedro Almodovar. "It was difficult thank God. He is so specific and sometimes you get frightened by that as if someone is stealing your freedom to create the character. You have to read what he wants from you." Was it an artistic battle? "Yes it was," he says with a pleased with himself smile.
His character in Skin is a cosmetic surgeon who carried out surgery whether people wanted it or not. "He's more than that - he is a dangerous man - he starts believing he is God and that he can transform reality. He feels he can transform human life.
"The movie is about the reflection of identity and what can change. You can't escape who you are. He's a monster, cold, and doesn't feel affection for anyone but himself. He moves with tremendous economy. He just does what he wants and has no ethics.
"The normal tendency in any actor would be to do this character big and that was my reaction. But I decided to go for flat, with little movements by lethal subtle when I'm recommending a guy to use dildos it's like I'm talking with an old lady and telling her to take aspirin at the time. This ruling was mind blowing sometimes grotesque."
Has he ever had cosmetic surgery or the desire to? "No, I am against it for me. I think everybody can do what they want to do but I am starting to like grey hair and wrinkles and find them interesting." I take the opportunity to stare at his face, open, chiseled, brooding and handsome - there are no wrinkles. "Sometimes I have wrinkles, in the morning. It depends on what kind of night that I had. I accept myself and the way that I am growing older. I have eye bags and some people have proposed to me to take them out but I said no."
I look harder. There is the vaguest hint of an eye bag. Who suggested that he should have his face worked on? Doctors? "Yes. Basically if you live in Los Angeles and you want to put the face of a dog on yours that can happen. In fact it does happen. If you look on YouTube people are turning themselves into animals."
He looks at me with his head on one side and his big-eyed cat look, "Puss is not a bad cat. He is very faithful to his friends and people he loves." In the movie he has a romance with another cat, Kitty. "It's one of those classic ones where they're fighting all the time but you know they love each other. Kitty is strong and she has her issues," he says approvingly. Is that his favourite kind of woman, strong and with issues? "Maybe." He gives a slow quizzical smile. He leans back in his chair and puts his knees up. He is very supple. His tan cowboy boots are on the silk striped hotel sofa.
He is hoping there will be a Puss sequel. "It's surprisingly complex. It takes a long time." A few weeks later I visited Dreamworks and they told me it takes a month for three seconds of animation, and that's if they're lucky. Puss took three years to make. The animation process is extremely complex. Says Chris Miller, "Our recording sessions are spread out over two of those three years. It's always a difficult scheduling thing. But when we were writing this movie and talking to Antonio we really wanted to create a classic story. Give Puss something from which he needed to recover, as if it was a Western. We had to punch a giant hole in Puss's heart."
Banderas tells me, "When you first have a script you know it's a pretext to start working, it's not the final script. The creative people listen to your voice and transform the script. When you start recording there are all these cameras so they can draw from you. They give you sometimes the elements of the cat, the hat, the sword. Then you have the ability to improvise and utilize alternate takes. You might do three, four hours a day for two months and then you'll see the beginning stages of the animations, and then you have ideas. What about this? What about that? It's a very liberating creative process but it's very long. But at least you don't have to go through make-up and you can go in your pyjamas if you want to."
He smells sweet and musky. It's his own perfume. He designed it and actually wears it." Next up he would like to start directing again, his third movie. The first two Crazy In Alabama which starred Melanie Griffiths, and Summer Rain, were based on books.
"Solo is my original idea. I'm working with a scriptwriter. It's about a Spanish colonel coming home from Afghanistan who has experienced something crazy. It's almost touching the world of science-fiction. I am the producer, the director and I'm going to jump into the parts and direct myself and do a lot of close-ups."
He's not afraid of close-ups? "I am. I'm afraid of everything but at the same time I do what I'm afraid of because that's the way life is. Life is frightening but you live it," he says with eyes burning and head tossed back, suddenly lively. "I'm not really afraid of the close-up, I'm afraid of the ego. I have to control those situations, especially the Leo situation." He's referring to his big cat star sign, renowned for egotistical, demanding behaviour. Griffiths was born August 9 and he on the 10th. Both right in the centre of the fiery sign.
Does that mean there are lots of sparks and fighting? "No. it means that we'll have a party for both of us on the same day, which is economical. Sometimes we both roar at the same time and that can be very loud. But we are both cats. We come to terms with it. She always wins."
There are constant rumours about Griffiths. The main one that she gets very jealous if Banderas is on location and other actresses are around. There are rumours that her possessiveness have caused fights. "No, no, no. people get nervous of others' happiness.
"There is a beautiful anecdote in Spain of a very popular dramatist. This guy was famous and he would go to meetings with intellectuals who thought they were better than him but they were not so successful. The guy would always go back to the group after having a successful opening night. The opening was fantastic and they made hell for him. So one day when he had an extremely successful opening night he went to his friend's place who was a doctor and he said 'Can you put my leg in a cast even though it's not broken'. He did and he went to his group of friends and told them that he fell down the stairs and he was in pain. So instead of making hell for him they thought he was suffering a bit so they were nice."
Does he feel he has to put his leg in a metaphorical cast? "Absolutely I do?" Griffiths once told me that when she met Banderas it was if she'd waited her whole life for him. Did he feel the same way, the instant purring of two felines? "Yes, it was a lot of purring. I didn't know until I met her that I had a dream that one day I would meet a woman like that. It was very much in some abstract part of my brain. But when I met her I knew she was the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.
"I feel that we are human beings who have a lot of shit in life and we travel with it. But once we have the capacity to know love and loss you should be able to adapt to what's coming next. You can't be stuck. The point is, if you get stuck in the beginning of a relationship then you have to fake it. And if you fake it you are not going to be able to find the next step. You are not going to be able to move with it. You have to be able to move with your relationship and not be afraid of transforming and getting into new spaces. I think that's our success as a couple for 17 years.
"You have to accept change. Sometimes it's even better than the change you would long for, from what you had in the beginning. It does change though. It's impossible to keep that rush, that crush that you had in the beginning forever. It's stupid to think so. Everybody is looking for that orgasmic feeling that you have in the first six months and the moment they lose that they break up and look for someone else to find it again. We are human beings and sometimes we always want that, but then we won't mature because that thing doesn't last.
"Melanie and I were both coming from failures in our relationships. So it was a non said agreement, a strange invisible pact between us. That we would give ourselves time to be patient with each other. To overcome any crisis and get out of the tunnel."
Invisible pact? How does that work? "Because that's what it is. We didn't sit down and say we're going to do this or that. It didn't happen like that. It's something you just know in the back of your head."
I love the way he talks about invisible pacts and he talks with such passion and heat. In a relationship is he the person who wants to love most or be loved most? "I think it changes. Sometimes I may be depressed and she's the one who is pulling me up. If I see that she's down I take the reins. Depends on the situation. You go with it. It's about your capacity to adapt and recognize the life in which you are living."

All Sarah Jessica Parker has to say is 'How are you?' and you feel she knows you. She feels like a friend.
She's unfathomably familiar and empathic. Not just because we've seen her endlessly as Carrie in Sex And The City but because she has an uncanny ability to relate to vulnerability everywhere: Whether lonely and looking for love in Manhattan, juggling a job, a husband and kids as she did recently in I Don't Know How She Does It, or as the mother of a rebellious 15-year-old in her new movie New Year's Eve.
As she throws off her Giuseppe Zanotti black and white patent leather shoes in her New York hotel room she gives off just a hint of tiredness and jokes that the geranium red corset bodiced Oscar de la Renta dress will be returned tomorrow. 'You can wear it next,' she offers.
In real life her wardrobe is 'Anything I can put on quickly and not embarrass my son.' It's practical, about being a mum. She does not share an insatiable appetite for shoes like her iconic character Carrie. I think she'd be ashamed to own 300 pairs. If designers want to loan her outfits she's happy. She's already bought everybody's Christmas present yet says, 'I cringe inside when anybody gives me something. I don't know why. I just get embarrassed.'
Is she the same way about receiving love? 'No, I'm not,' she says with gratitude. When I tell her I'm a fan of her perfume Lovely because it makes me feel emotional she almost purrs with empathy. 'That's what I hoped.'
New Year's Eve is very emotional for her. She's superstitious that a bad one might mean a bad year so she always likes to be surrounded by her loved ones.
New Year's Eve the movie has an ensemble cast that includes Jessica Biel, Katherine Heigl and Ashton Kutcher, and it's set in her beloved Manhattan, for which she was grateful. No long on-location shoots and being separated from her son James Wilkie, now 8 and two-year-old twins Marion Loretta Elwell and Tabitha Hodge, nicknamed Kitty and Babe.
She shudders slightly at the thought of them being rebellious teenagers. She particularly can't imagine James as being a sulky and uncommunicative adolescent. She says that he loves being with his mother. Their bond is emotional and strong. 'When he was born the paediatrician called him a hothouse flower' because he was so delicate. And what did she say of the twins? 'That one of them was going to look after me and hold my hand at the end and the other one was going to arrange the funeral.'
The twins she says are not at all alike even though they were born 20 seconds apart. 'One of them likes to be cuddled at a certain time of day, the other a different time. One of them likes to eat all the time, the other only if she's really hungry. One of them is a Democrat and one of them is a Republican,' she laughs.
Her movie daughter is 15 and struggling for independence and her mother is struggling to protect her. 'It's a case of the tighter the grip the looser the hold.'
Was she ever a rebellious teenager? 'No. I was already independent. I was already working.' Indeed her work ethic has always been gargantuan. She first appeared on Broadway as one of the orphans in Annie and took over the role in 1979 when she was 14 and has never stopped working.
She takes work extremely seriously, she's very much rooted in her humble past. She was born in the coal mining town of Nelsonville, Ohio. Her father Stephen Parker, an aspiring writer, divorced her mother Barbara when she was a toddler. Her mother, a nursery school teacher, met and married lorry driver Paul Forste with whom she had more children. With a total of eight children to feed and clothe her mother was often forced to be rather frugal. I've read stories that their electricity was constantly turned off.
'That's definitely exaggerated, although there were some Christmases where we went without presents. But my parents gave us so much love. We didn't have everything we wanted but we had everything we needed.' She pauses with just a tiny ache in her pause.
'My mother was a master juggler. If you ask her she'll say she was a wreck. There's plenty of screaming that went on in the house but I think it was necessary just to be heard, there were eight children.' One can't imagine SJP screaming to be heard. She can get her point across with a breathy whisper.
What did she learn from her mother? 'Everything. She made so many good choices and tried to do the right thing. I try to replicate it as much as I can,' she says earnestly.
Her mother provided a childhood rich in culture. They moved to New York City at a time when the arts were very well funded by the city. Most of her siblings ended up in successful careers in the arts.
In I Don't Know How She Does It she played a woman who is not wealthy and works in a male dominated business (finance) and is a devoted mother. The question to SJP is not just how she does it but why? If one doesn't have to juggle career and children and husband for financial reasons why do we try?
'The beauty of this time is that we do have choices and we can support each other in these choices. For me it has been hard to say no. I wanted a family and before I had a family I was a person that was a career person. I tried to marry those two things and sometimes it is successful and sometimes it is not.'
SJP, famous for playing the world's most famous single woman, must have found it a gruelling adjustment to embrace pregnancy and motherhood.
'It wasn't. I stopped working a year after James Wilkie was born so I had a nice amount of time with him. I think the bigger adjustment has been to go from one to three children. It's a much bigger adjustment than becoming a mother. One child in retrospect seems a cake walk compared to where I stand today. You only know what you know, but you figure it out. My children are a great blessing and I love them. They are the source of all the joy in my life. The main source.'
She 'tried and tried and tried' to get pregnant again 'but it just wasn't meant to be in the conventional way.' Her twins, who arrived in June 2009, were birthed by a surrogate using eggs that Parker had previously frozen and husband Matthew Broderick's sperm.
Did she know that she would be acquiring twins? 'No, we didn't. No, we didn't,' she says as if the shock still resonates. 'It was a wonderful shock. But we didn't know. We understood that it was a possibility, but we didn't spend a lot of time on the math and the science of it. We were just hopeful that we had one healthy child. We were hoping very much for that and everything else was the cherry on the sundae.'
Was it very different meeting your children rather than giving birth to them? 'Yes, it is definitely a different experience. You don't know them as well immediately as you do a child (you've given birth to). In my case it was a very different preparation. Everyone is different. You do have an immediate love and affection for them. You know what you want to do and what is instinctual happens. For me it did right away, I can't speak for other people. Other people have different experiences.'
She's unfazed by being asked intimidate questions and almost enjoys exposing her vulnerable core, perhaps so that we can bond with that place of insecurity. It wasn't a choice. 'I would give birth as often as I could. I loved all the aspects of my pregnancy with our son - the good and the bad.'
She didn't want James Wilkie to be alone and responsible for looking after his parents when they got old. Wherever possible she likes to bring her children to the set of the movie or work in NYC. She'd only had the twins for a couple of months before Sex In The City 2 meant she had to travel to Morocco.
'That was rough,' she says. 'My daughters were too young for their requisite shots. I was separated from them for a while and that was really distressing.
'You hope that your children are not terrifically disrupted by the choices you make and you always remind yourself they are the priority.'
What does she have coming up next? 'Nothing,' she says with a mixture of wonderment and relief. She's looking at various scripts, both as a producer and as an actress and hoping that something will work out that works easily for the children that doesn't require separation.
She and Broderick have been married since May 1997. They share domestic and childcare duties. Broderick seems to be the ultimate domesticated dad. There are always pap shots of him doing the groceries. Does she feel she is able to give him the attention he needs?
'Yes. He deserves it.' She tells me that it's not an imbalance of him always doing the shopping. 'I always pack for him but I will say this. He shops for me a lot and he cooks for all of us, although he doesn't pack for me. There are a lot of things he does better than I do, so it balances itself out. I don't feel taken advantage of. He does lots in the house. We take care of each other.'
A few years ago I read that she said Broderick was a complicated person and they have had "treacherous train rides". I was wondering how they could fit such high adrenalin into their balanced domesticated bliss. Were the train rides really treacherous? 'I wouldn't say that's entirely true. We've been together for 20 years and you have good days, you have decent days, and you have bad days. That's a marriage. That's a relationship. That's a friendship.
'Relationships outside the marriage run the same course. If you're in it for the long haul and you want meaningful relationships you are going to go through lots of different periods, and I think that's important.'
When we find that love, how do we keep it? 'I think kids can really distract you from it. Maybe in good and bad ways. It's important to have all eyes on all parts of the relationship. It's something you really have to pay attention to. Some people are good at it. They have everything planned. Our lives don't always allow that, but we try.'
When she was growing up is this how she imagined her life would be? 'No. I would never have imagined this particular life. From a young age I imagined the job that I wanted. And that's probably as much as I would have ever dreamed of. Everything else has been surprising and miraculous.'
She never dreamt about having a husband and children? 'I didn't dream of that,' she says. 'It wasn't that I didn't want it. It was just that I wasn't one of those girls who dreamed of her wedding day and the birth of her first child. I assumed it was going to happen but I didn't know when it was going to happen because I was focused on my work. I didn't suffer for it. I was just pootling along with my life. Then I met someone and it seemed to be right.'
She says it without romantic fanfare. It doesn't sound like one of those coup de foudre things. She's already been in a long relationship with the then self-destructive Robert Downey Jr and before that with Nicolas Cage. With Broderick she did not instantly know this was the person she would end up marrying.
'I don't know that I thought about that right away. Maybe I recognised it sort of soon. I met this wonderful person and we wanted to be together. And after a while it became apparent that I wanted to be with him longer than temporarily.'
And that had never happened before? 'No it hadn't. and I hadn't thought about it. I was pretty young and I didn't think about making those big decisions before that.'
Does she think she'll have any more children? 'I don't know,' she says. Does that mean she's at least thinking about it? 'I don't know she says.' You imagine part of her would like a giant brood. But that could be technically difficult.
Was it hard to separate from the fictional Carrie? 'In some ways I don't feel entirely separated. I've spent a long time playing her and I miss her. I don't want to feel sad or maudlin. I feel lucky. Sex In The City 3 may or may not be in the future, but it's certainly not in the near future.'
Carrie was easy to relate to, she had so many insecurities. She nods. 'I think insecurities change and evolve as time marches on and new concerns creep up. Children provide a whole new set of concerns. Who knows what I'll be insecure about next week. I always have insecurities. A lot of them about work and how it will be received.'
Does she have insecurities about her looks and the ageing process? 'I try to dress appropriately for my age and I'm a realist about what I look like. If I'm feeling insecure I will be less inclined to keep wearing what I'm wearing. My shoes are fairly high, three inches. I don't think there is age appropriateness in shoes. Wear whatever your body would allow.
'If those physical things were my insecurities I would be thrilled. What wonderful problems. My insecurities are more substantial than that. I worry first and foremost about my children, their health. My husband, and his. I worry about what opportunities will come up. My own creative satisfaction. How will I pursue things and will the work be good.'
Her face is botox and filler free. She looks like most women her age, only tinier. Recently there seems to have been a shift - women into their forties, fifties, sixties, that are working in film and television and no longer feel forced to have work done.
'There's a long list of women who are working - Helen Mirren, Annette Bening, Jodie Foster, Sandra Bullock, Meryl Streep who is in a league of her own. There are women who feel that botox is necessary, but more and more I don't think it is important for the industry. People want to make movies that are successful, and sometimes they include women and sometimes they don't. I think it's less and less about exterior. At least I would hope so. I'm an eternal optimist.'
The only thing she knows for sure about the future is that she wants to be part of her children's lives day to day - their school life, their play times, getting ready for a family Christmas. She's happy with that. 'More than anything I love those times.'

Carrie Fisher's house is like the witch's house in Hansel and Gretel. In the winding path leading up to it there are grassy verges with giant toadstoolsand on the porch a wooden bird swings with a key in its mouth. There are stained glass churchy looking windows that make the light inside dappled and spooky. There's a moose head over the fireplace, tan leather couches, vintage tapestry candlewick cushions, oak carved picture frames and owls. One wall is covered in oil paintings of Victorian cats and poodles. Everywhere there's glass baubles and fairy lights, hand-painted lamps.
Tchotchke collected over a lifetime. Carrie Fisher is a hoarder of objects, yet maybe the sentiments behind all of them she's had to relinquish from her mind.
Carrie Fisher had an A-list mind. It was sharp and sarky and required at all the best parties. Although she partied a little too hard, was bipolar, depressed, ended up in rehab and in hospital rooms having her stomach pumped a few too many times.
As she has documented in Postcards from the Edge and Wishful Drinking. Her latest book Shockaholic is about the shock therapy she had to level her out, to kick back those addictive demons and her desire to mute out once and for all the shrieking feelings that tell her she is not good enough.
She can't remember the exact moment where she decided ECT wasn't as frightening as something from One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest or Frances, that it wasn't a punishment or an act of control or submission or tantamount to a lobotomy. She can't remember that because a lot of her brain, the bits with the pain in it, has been shocked out of existence.
She describes it as 'like getting your nails done if your nails were your cerebral cortex.' She goes every six weeks and she says it feels as if her brain once set in cement was blasted open like a Hoover dam.
A lot of people float in and out of her house; her cleaner, her cook, her assistant, her mother's assistant her mother Debbie Reynolds lives in an adjacent house.
She arrives tiny, bare feet, unpedicured, thin legs in black leggings, large breasts pulled inside a purple cardigan. Long dark hair pulled back. Her eyes look haunted and at the same time blank.
She is smoking a pretend cigarette. 'It's a pacifier with vapour. It makes me look like an idiot.' I admire her moose and she tells me that she's having a tiger's ass delivered for the other side. 'You see, that's what I've been missing all my life. A life without a tiger's ass is not worth living and not worth writing about.'
She likes to write everything down. Little phrases going round and round in her head constantly being perfected. Her clever mind took her such a long way, further than all the galaxies that Princess Leia could never even imagine.
She's just been to the dentist and had a tooth pulled. She can't have any pain medication. 'My teeth are all new as of last week.my whole thing with painkillers is you take them when you're not in pain. And right now with the ECT I'm on a blocker so I can't feel painkillers even if I took a truckload.'
Fisher always liked to block things out and now all of her short-term memory is completely dissolved. Large chunks of her vocabulary , something that was very precious to her, have gone and been replaced by simpler versions of the same word. She thinks that maybe it has improved her writing, made it more straight.
This book is definitely different to the others. It's hard to put your finger on what's missing. Maybe nothing. Maybe it's just more direct. It's certainly compulsive reading.
It's hard to put your finger on what's different with this book. It feels direct, raw. It is certainly compulsive reading. 'I am a terrible liar and this book… I got frightened that it was too personal.'
The book talks about waking up next to her dead friend Greg Stevens, a gay Republican political operative, celebrating Michael Jackson's last Christmas with him, her relationship with Elizabeth Taylor, who stole her father Eddie Fisher away from her, and making up with Eddie Fisher, and losing him again when he died.
They had a lot in common. Nice singing voices, a desire to be heard and a desire to take drugs. But more of that later.
There is no filter mechanism with Fisher. She says everything she's thinking. Most of it comes out in an unstoppable jumble of random thoughts that are tenuously linked.
'I went to the shrink and I said I don't have any secrets except the secret I get loaded. He said maybe that's my only of giving myself a private life.'
When she was born she was public property, her birth across all the tabloids. She was born in the goldfish bowl. 'You know how you saw your father more on TV than you did in real life. I don't think many people would say, "Oh God. You too."'
A man with platinum hair peers in. 'He lives with my mother. They are lovers. He is her gay husband. She's copying me.' The man turns out to be her mother's carer. But Fisher did indeed have a gay husband, chairman of CAA Bryan Lourd. He's an uber agent, flamboyant, generous, well-loved within the Hollywood community. Didn't she realise he was gay when she married him? 'He must have forgotten to tell me. And my mother also had someone come in and die in her house.'
She likes to talk about history repeating itself. Stevens was one of her greatest friends. He liked to as Hollywood folk call it 'party.' Apparently he had not been partying the night he died, but he took three OxyContins and he was next to her.
This was the catalyst for her mind to implode. She felt haunted. She felt grief and she seemed to process all of it in quite a psychotic destructive way.
Her daughter Billie suffered because she was full-time crazy. She feels very guilty about this now. Billie went to live with her father and now is studying at NYU. She doesn't remember exactly how bad it was for a teenager to be living with a bipolar mother who got back into drugs.
'The short-term memory is shit so I keep notes. Do you want some cereal?' She is snacking on a bag of Jenny Craig cereal. Since her ECT therapy she forgot what she had to do not to gain weight. She gained 60lbs and has now lost 50 of them by sticking with Jenny.
In her book she writes, "Craig is great. Craig is good. Thank you for this portion appropriate food. Amen! And by men I mean the four or five that might look at me again in a few Jennified months."
As she puts what look like Rice Krispies in her mouth one by one she puts on naughty face. 'This is my contraband. They hide the snacks from me because I'm a truant. I like to get away with something. Also I slipped - Baskins and Robbins chocolate ice-cream. You don't think I'm good all the time?'
Fisher would hate to be thought of as good. 'I don't know what the fuck happened. I went on the road. I wasn't exercising, which I did freakishly do ever since I was in a mental hospital. I would exercise in the morning, then go to the mental hospital so at least I had control of my physical body. For 15 years I was exercising regularly. I went on the road. I was older. I would eat crap. I ate ten peanut butter balance bars a day and full fat Coca Cola.'
You didn't have Diet Coke? 'I don't know why I didn't. I got a little manic. It all started when Greg died. Then I started doing ECT and I've been more productive these last four years but I got fat. I stopped the drugs, but instead I was eating and shopping. And the sex. This was with strangers. People at bus stops. I didn't have a relationship.
Manic depression comes with excessive promiscuity, spending. And then I stopped. And I stopped the substance abuse.'
She's joking about the sex. She has not got rid of her addiction to shocking. She was supposed to have stopped the substance abuse years ago but somehow she got someone to give her OxyContin.
'You die in your sleep. I have done that. But I didn't do this this time. When I slipped four years ago I did it. That was my moment in the sun. everyone was devastated. I shouldn't have but I did. I shopped. I brought presents and sent them all around the world. They had to stop my Barneys card.
'I was spending everything I was making and I had to maintain this residence while I was on the road. Now I'm allocated a certain amount of money and I like getting away with something. She puts on a little girl's voice. 'Hi, can I have another $400 because I want to get shoes.
'But between the shopping and the eating and the ECT I had the most productive four years of my life. The little slip thing didn't do my daughter any good. She'll never be able to think that I'll be OK forever. Nobody who has been an addict can ever think that.'
She speaks about Billie with surprising maternal pride. 'She's kind, good, a fantastic girl. She's a DNA jackpot. She just worries about me sometimes and I'm sorry for that but that's her good little heart. She hated me for a minute there, sure. I did too. It was like a club. I wasn't stumbling around or anything, I just checked out.'
She talks about shopping, sex, all with the same tone. 'ECT is attractive if you're suicidally depressed. I wasn't suicidal but I came to a point where nothing was helping and I thought I was a burden on everyone. Being depress, being bipolar, medication I was or was not taking was not working. They flew me back from my show to do the ECT. You get to the end of the hall. There were no options. And this has made things possible.'
She means she was in a vicious spiral? 'And now I'm circling the dream. They asked me to do it before and I said no. I'm not suggesting you feel a little bit blue get some ECT. But if you've exhausted the options of talk therapy coupled with medication and hospitalisation stays and none of this works you are obliged for the sake of your family to try it.'
She says ECT doesn't hurt. 'They put you to sleep and there's no convulsions. It's a short acting anaesthetic and they put you next to this thing that looks like a DVD machine. And the doctor puts these two little pieces of film here.' She points to her temples. 'They say dream a nice dream. You have a headache, you come home, you take a nap, you're done.'
Only the other night did she move back into the room in which Stevens died in 2008. How did she end up sleeping with him? 'The house was full.'
I'm only there for one afternoon and there's been a constant stream of guests. Sean Lennon had a room there and James Blunt wrote a few songs in her bathroom that has a piano while he stayed there.
'It's a clubhouse. It's fun. No wonder Greg wanted to die here.' And then shouting: 'No. He wanted to live here. Imagine, just three little pills and then he died. Like bam.' She goes over the minutes of the night or as much as she can remember them, which is actually quite a lot for someone who has had their brain cells zapped. Even the shock therapy can't quite remove it.
What you're never sure of with her is the chronological order of events and when they happened. It all spills out of her like separate dream sequences.
'I went to AA the whole time. It's because of AA I'm not dead. But they don't want me to talk about it because generally people talk about it then they get loaded. I went to meetings and I lied. I went to AA meetings on drugs.'
I think she's very remorseful about this. It's just her voice isn't remorseful. It doesn't register sad or happy. It's as if she can only feel the emotions in the present.
'In this period of time I have been doing ECT and AA. Anything with letters in it. My bra size was so big it was an L. Beverly d'Angelo (an actress friend who likes surgery) wants me to go in and have twin reductions. Right now I'm ignoring them. I hear it's a painful surgery.'
She tells me that she read that she had a breast lift but didn't remember it because of the ECT. Googling herself was another addiction. 'I don't like to look. This morning I read one about me being gay. People say bad stuff about you, like I'm not bankable.'
She lists the current Top 10 bad things said about her on Google. It's strange she can remember. For instance if she sees a movie she can watch it over again because she can't remember the ending, but she remembers everything bad said about her on the internet.
'Even if I had half a brain that half would remember each bad thing. It's emblazoned.
'I can watch a movie from start to finish and not remember seeing it, so I'm constantly entertained,' low chortle. 'It happens with books. I keep getting to this passage and going wow this is really familiar. It turns out I've been reading American Pastoral three times. It's about ageing.'
'With age comes wisdom and a whole bunch of other bad shit, bloat and wrinkles and terrible things with the neck. I say in life you can live on one side of the magnifying glass or the other. The side that makes big things small or the side that makes small things big.'
And she can do that without mind numbing drugs? 'Yes. You learn to be surrounded by the right friends. I don't want my daughter to have to worry so I will do what it takes. When I slipped it was with opiates. I had to lie to get them and remember I don't like lying.'
Does she think she and her daughter's relationship survived the patch when she was in an altered state? 'We did. But it cost. My purpose is to make her life comfortable. For her to live in a space where she's the best person she can be. That she can be as happy as she can be in life. I have failed her but she has forgiven me. She will always have the hairs on the back of her neck stand out. They've been trained to.' By this she means Billie will always be frightened of what her mother might have got up to.
'She is doing incredibly well. She's had the same boyfriend for two years. No one deserves this good a daughter, except maybe Nelson Mandela. She is studying music and music business, so there's a little bit of her being like her dad, and there's a creative part of her. She's very responsible. She's got a good voice. She takes singing, writing and philosophy.'
How does she get on with her ex-husband? 'We have a good relationship. His hairs are also trained. The three of us went to Amsterdam for her birthday. And then we went shopping and decorated her apartment. We were in ABC (trendy homeware store in New York) for the entire day. I asked Bryan to get back together with me. I told him it would be good for his image. It could be seen as compassionate, weird and complex. I didn't really mean it. He said what about his boyfriend? I said it would all stay the same.
'Then there was that hurricane that wasn't a hurricane and I'm in New York. Bryan, his boyfriend Bruce, and Billie are all somewhere else. Billie calls me and says "Daddy says you should go to the apartment" and I say I'm smelling a reality show. The idea of me moving into the apartment with Bryan, his boyfriend and Bryan's boyfriend's daughter who's four. I thought maybe I could sleep with Bryan's boyfriend, and then Cindy, my lesbian assistant, could sleep with Billie's boyfriend.' She booms with laughter at her own scenario.
'We've come a long way. Even if we weren't always in the best of shape our priority has always been our daughter. But we are actual humans, so we might have not got along as one might not.'
She loved him madly at some point? 'Yes. I picked him to have a child, so it's not like I'm unaware of his strengths.'
Was he a love of her life? 'No.' She picked him for his DNA? 'No. He took very good care of me. He's a good father. He was a reaction. He wasn't Paul.'
She's talking Paul Simon. They went out for six years, were married for two, divorced for one, and got back together for another three. Twelve years altogether. He counts as love of her life.
Does she mean that Bryan was the opposite of Paul? 'I mean he's a caretaker. Paul probably is a bit more now but he and I were not a good mix in a relationship. And to have brought other people into it would have been a scream. We understood each other. We had a blast. We were way too similar.
'We stupidly read our horoscopes one day - we are both the same sign. It said Librans either get along like a house on fire or they fight like cats and dogs. We were a good match in this way but it didn't work. It would be interesting if we wrote down what we were saying to each other. Sometimes we totally understood what the other person wasn't saying. We are the same species and that does not make a good relationship.'
It makes a passionate yes. 'Yes,' said deadpan. They probably had great sex. 'Probably.' A dry laugh. 'We had make up sex we broke up so often. Every time we broke up I would take that lamp with me and he knew it was for sure.' She gestures to a hand painted glass lamp on the piano. 'I would get that lamp and I would say I'm leaving. It cost $20,000. That was my break-up lamp.'
Interesting the treatment hasn't made her forget any of that stuff. Her recall about Paul Simon is vivid and she is the most animated talking about him. 'Yes, I remember Paul very fondly. I remember I took a lot of LSD at that period as well.' Does she remember the LSD? 'Very fondly.
'Oh, shall I call my doctor now and say my foot hurts, I need some LSD.' You get the impression she is used to calling up doctors for whatever she wants. She shared a dentist with Michael Jackson and bizarrely they spent his last Christmas together.
'His kids are adorable. He was a good dad. He gave them whatever it was he hadn't had himself. All that love. And you can see it. You cannot fake that.'
The dentist, Dr Chandler, is now deceased. He was happy to let his kid hang out with Michael Jackson and sleep in the same bed and then suddenly there was all those allegations of abuse.
'He killed himself. Don't you think he might be guilty? His own son stopped speaking to him and said it was all a lie. He trapped Michael. That guy was a monster. He was evil and manipulative and dark. Whereas Michael was good and sweet.'
Did she not find it scary that she and Jackson had a dentist and doctor in common, evil facilitators? She doesn't answer directly.
'Arnie (Klein) was his skin doctor and probably gave him pain medication because of the burns he had. I don't think he would have had Demerol. But you know, doctors in this town, the bigger the celebrity the larger the prescription.'
What was Michael like to hang out with? 'Well he wasn't ordinary. There was no one like him. He was a mensch. He had a sweet kind of presence. He loved people and he wanted everyone have what they wanted. He wasn't dark, he was just really odd, and wouldn't you be? I'm odd. But there was a very ordinary part to him and there is to me.'
Part of her oddness comes from always being in the spotlight, even if in her case to start off with it was bathing in her mother's glow. 'We were in the public eye. He was in the iris, I was more in the whites. We both had complicated intense relationships with our parents. He danced his stuff away. When we went to the ranch we found out in the morning he was in this dark room and he'd been there dancing all night. Sweet.
'It must have been hard for the siblings to have him and the mum, you know, always having to apologise for what he was so that you didn't feel diminished by it. You never want to say this is a problem. Michael wanted to fit in. He wanted to make you feel comfortable, and when he couldn't his solution was drugs. He trusted children because they couldn't come up with ways to manipulate him or wrong reasons to love him. He liked people that didn't know who he was. That somehow diminished something ugly. They were innocent, therefore he was innocent. But he wasn't so innocent that he didn't know when people around him were corrupt.'
Did she see him often with her short-time stepmother and his fantasy mother Elizabeth Taylor. 'Oh, they were very peaceful together. They didn't have to explain anything. They didn't have to make the other person feel not so bad about being famous. It's a very complicated club to be in.
'When Paul and I were together the issue of celebrity was neutralized. We didn't have to talk about it. We didn't have to say fucking shit here come the paparazzi. Whereas to everyone else that seemed the weirdest thing in the world. What rendered that manageable was finding an ordinary space in this extraordinary one.'
Is she ever in touch Paul Simon? 'Not really. Paul and I didn't have children together. It was a very intense relationship. I don't know how people do that. We can't stay in contact because we had that kind of relationship: boom, boom, boom. It would be hard to maintain it to settle into some other kind of one. We have communicated through a friend of mine in England. He's got a life now, a peaceful place. I saw him perform at Glastonbury and he's fantastic. Introspective, intellectual.'
We backtrack to Elizabeth Taylor. Not that she purposely doesn't want to talk about Paul Simon. It's as if we're constantly talking about everything at once and I can never be sure that our interview isn't like that book she keeps reading over and over again and forgets that she's read it.
'Elizabeth Taylor and I became friends. She would ask me to present her awards and I would say "Here's to the woman. Thank yo for getting Eddie out of the house."'
By Eddie she means Eddie Fisher, her father, who left her mother for Elizabeth Taylor. 'She called me at one point to get Eddie's number. I didn't realise they hadn't spoken. He didn't believe it was her. Then she was telling him to talk to his doctor about his medication. They had a sweet talk. I called her when Eddie died and she cried. She was a good person.'
Was Eddie a good person? 'Good person. Terrible father. I did not have a traditional relationship with him. (He was absent from most of her childhood and appeared later on in life.' At one point they were drug buddies. Later on they became inextricably close.
'I loved him and I know who he was and that's because I stopped needing him or expecting him to act like a father.'
She thinks the apple didn't fall far from the tree. They both had similar addictive personalities. 'I knew he was insane and to a certain extent I catered to it. I made him laugh. He was hilarious and a darling, a child, a boy. He wasn't a man at all, but not like Michael, he was sexual. Sex for him was an appetite. He was a darling man and I miss him.
'My mother came over the other day and said "lots of pictures of Eddie in here."' She pulls face of disapproval. 'He had just passed and somehow all the pictures had arranged themselves around me in the room.'
Her mother was upset to see so many pictures of the husband who left her? 'She took note.' They never made up then? 'No. they both came to my show the same night. He was in a wheelchair and she was in my dressing room and he came to see me and she hid behind the costumes. Then she went out into the hall and they met in the elevator. But it was the only chance they had to see each other.
'He could always sing and once he sang at my show and they gave him an ovation and he stood up out of the wheelchair. He'd been healed by show business. I feel cheated that he died. We were having such a good time.'
She didn't have him in her childhood and then she found him again. They seemed to be children together. 'Then I got him only to lose him again. But at least I got him. He would have flirted with you. He was also really losing it. He thought this guy I was seeing who was white and 39 was Barak Obama. We both loved Barak Obama.
'He smoked a lot of drugs and he liked to smoke a lot. We got him this pipe that looks like a woman's ass. I used to get him strippers- although he hated the last set of strippers I got him. There's the holocaust and then there's Eddie's strippers holocaust. They put chocolate on their tits and had him touch it. He didn't like that. It's not a good memory to have. I wish ECT had given you a menu: take this bit.'
Will she forget today? 'I will forget details. They are not my strong suit. I forget words. I am used to being lickety split. And now I don't connect as fast. Who knows if it's ECT, LSD or AGE.
There's a kind of optimism though. ECT has given her hope, not despair. 'I don't have a boyfriend. I'm going to go on the internet. Maybe there's a web site I can start for over the hill celebrities. I would like a British boyfriend. I would like him to be black and a professor at Oxford. The white thing hasn't worked and basically I worship Obama.
'Salman is saying I could be Lady Rushdie. I'm having Halloween with him, but I know he likes much younger women.' Her white fluffy dog starts wagging its tail excitedly. 'That's because my mother is here. Can you imagine sharing a dog with your mother? Can you imagine him having to choose between the two of us?' Suddenly her voice breaks from its monotone. There's an edge of competitiveness neediness, and we glimpse the old Fisher, the one who needs the dog to love her most.

The first time I met Julianne Hough she was in sequin hot pants on the set of the ill-fated Burlesque. Even then there was something about her that stood out.
She was relentlessly polite and talked with gratitude about her background as a dancer on Dancing With The Stars, America's Strictly, and as soon as she heard my British accent, she was keen to bond with me about her years spent at Italia Conti in London and how in awe she was of Leona Lewis who was a few years above her.
She played up the fact she was an interesting mixture of extremes. Giggling, 'I'm literally in my bra and panties at the start of that movie. My dad is going to have to cover his eyes.' Her father and the rest of her family are Mormons from Utah.
She comes from generations of ballroom dancers. Somehow even wearing hardly any clothes she manages to seem wholesome. She seems knowing for her 23 years.
She played down the fact that her brother Derek was at the time all over the tabloids because he was 'dating' Cheryl Cole. She played down the fact that she had recently become one half of Hollywood's hottest and potentially most powerful showbusiness couples.
She'd just begun (spring 2010) her relationship with Ryan Seacrest who as well as being America's number one host - American Idol, E! News and a national daily radio show - has become one of America's most successful television producers. He is the man behind the vastly successful Keeping Up With The Kardashians and its various offshoots. And before that Denise Richards: It's Complicated.
Everyone loves Seacrest, including Hough. But more of that later.
Today, just over a year on Hough has more in common with Seacrest than she initially must have imagined. She has immense drive and the ability to throw herself at anything. She has just completed two leading lady roles. In the first she plays Ariel in the remake of Footloose, a damaged slutty girl who manages to dance her way into everybody's hearts. And next up a rock chick songbird who finds fame with Tom Cruise and Russell Brand in Rock Of Ages. In Footloose she pulls off a tough and charismatic performance.
Today she's wearing a grey T-shirt and a black leather mini skirt and manages to look cool even in the 100 degree heat. She has bright light blue eyes, huge. Long hair expertly highlighted from platinum to honey. Voluminous lips that are glossed in Chanel's Coral Reef. She is beyond pretty.
Does she think that she is similar to the rebellious Ariel? 'Ariel starts out as this stone cold girl who doesn't take crap from anybody, and then you see in her heart she doesn't want to be this person. When her boyfriend is asking her to take off her shirt you can tell she does this because that's how people expect her to behave, and I definitely can relate to that. I was at Italia Conti in London from the age of 10 to 15. I felt I was very mature for my age, as the youngest of 5 (four sisters, one brother). I was always very independent and in London teenagers are more mature than America. So when I went back to Utah I had matured so much more than my friends. I had nothing in common with them. It was so hard to relate to anybody and everyone thought I was much more worldly than I was. And Utah was very conservative.'
Can it be possibly true that this gorgeous creature who seems to have it all was a high school outcast? 'Yes, I was. It was like Mean Girls. I ate lunch in the bathroom alone and girls invited me to parties that were really just abandoned houses. I got asked to the prom only to get ditched and I was like oh, these American high school movies are real.'
There's only a fleck of bruised ego, a smidgen of pain that remains as she smiles and says, 'I think all that makes you tougher and stronger. I definitely have my guard up sometimes and I don't let a lot of people in. I'm very careful.'
So for instance any gossip on her brother and his links to Cheryl Cole is met with a sweet but firm 'I don't really speak about my brother's personal life. We are very close.'
She and her brother both studied at Italia Conti theatre arts school. 'My parents were going through a divorce so it seemed like a good time. "You two can go away for a couple of months." We ended up staying for five years.
She talks of that time with nostalgic sweetness and a little triumph.
'I was at school with Ashley Lilley from Mama Mia and Newton Faulkner. I knew him as Sam though, he still had the dreads.' She says that when she arrived she wasn't a very good dancer. A year later she couldn't stop winning ballroom competitions including the world championships at Blackpool.
'Dance was my life. I didn't eat. I wanted to just keep dancing because it was my life 24/7. I got burnt out though. I did too much and I wasn't really enjoying it any more. I did several seasons of Dancing with the Stars but I was definitely using it to get somewhere else. I don't mean in a bad way,' she corrects quickly as if I have just seen her ambition naked and she wants to cover it. And then she carries on, 'I loved the show. And then I did my music (she's signed to a country and western label) but I really wanted opportunities for acting."Not that she's content with just acting she want to incorporate the singing and dancing as well. 'When I think of the people I want to be like it's old school Hollywood actors. They did everything. They danced, they sang - Judy Garland, Ginger Rodgers. There weren't so many of them doing everything, that's why they became über stars.' There's no doubt that über stardom is on her horizon. That shared drive and ambition with Seacrest helps power that on.
Does she think they are similar as people? 'Definitely. We joke that we are the same person. We are our biggest competition. I am never satisfied with what I've done and it's the same thing with him.'
Does she feel that her relentless drive has affect her previous relationships badly - she was engaged to dancer Zach Wilson and then went out with country singer Chuck Wicks. They broke up in 2009? 'Trust me. I've been in relationships where it's been like that. Because I am driven and I have my goals and my craft and I'm doing everything so I can get somewhere some men feel emasculated by that. We definitely don't have that problem here. Ryan is very successful at what he does and I am on my path. We are doing different things. I've never met someone that's been so supportive as Ryan has been. I'm very lucky.'
They are also both so very busy. In the past Seacrest, 36, has not been too successful at juggling his enormous career with relationships. It takes someone who is independent and never needy to deal with that. Do they get to see each other often ? 'It's definitely hard but we make it work. It's funny watching us trying to make our schedules work. We're literally lying in bed right next to each other going OK, I'm here this day, let me see yours. Maybe I can fly here when you're off for these three hours. And we're going back and forth like that.'
Has she ever thought of working on something together? 'Oh goodness no. both our careers are very different.' She says with determination that they will never mix business with pleasure
Did he visit her on the Footloose set? 'He came on set once and it was a scene after Kenny (Wormald), who plays Ren, had done his angry dance and I say something like "You think I'm a slut. Let me show you something." And Ryan is like, "What. Wait. What are you going to show him?" So that was quite funny.' In reality her character was about to show her softer side.
The movie is about a town in the South that has banned dancing because it is deemed to be dangerous. But the newcomer in town thinks otherwise and shows it's an important emotional if not spiritual release.
Is Ryan a good dancer? Do they dance well together? 'Yes. What's great is he's not insecure. So even if he isn't great he'll do it anyway.'
How do they like to spend their time together. We work out outside a lot. We like hiking and we love to cook. We are always making guacamole. I used to never think about what I ate because I was always dancing and super skinny. When I stopped dancing regularly I blew up and put on 20lbs. so now I have to work out and it really sucks.
Does she ever just stop? 'Sometimes I'll have those days where I want to each chocolate and I'll put on The Notebook (a weepy movie that weirdly is also Leona Lewis's favourite). But most of the time I stay busy otherwise I feel I'll get sick, that my body will slow down…'
There seems little chance of slowing down. Next up she's in talks to star with Russell Brand in Lamb Of God, a story about love and religion.
Most of the time she prefers not to go to bed with a movie. 'If I get new Louboutins or Brian Atwoods or Miu Mius, the first night I get a pair I think they're so awesome I have to sleep with them.'
Good to know there is always room in the bed for shoes.

Michael Bublé and I are lying on his bed in his suite in the rock and roll hotel the Sunset Marquis in West Hollywood.
Bublé likes beds. He often cosies up with his grandparents and sings to them when they're all lounging on a big bed. He is in jeans and a soft grey T-shirt, striped socks, pale brown eyes, and is not afraid to look at you. He is not afraid for you to see him. When we lie down he cuddles a pillow in front of him. I have seen fat people do that. He's not fat. He is in part insecure and the rest of him is superbly relaxed.
He orders caviar and hot dog for his lunch. He giggles proudly. "This says everything about me." He means it defines the extremes in his character.
His grandfather is full Italian and it is this heritage within him that encourages him to express love and anger loudly. It encourages passion without middle ground. He sings old standards, yet young people love him. It's this very nature that has made him difficult to categorise. His albums are sold in the crooner section along with Frank Sinatra and the pop section along with Katy Perry.
He is now 36 with over 30 million album sales to date, making him the most successful male vocalist in the world. About three years ago there was a sea change in his career, a miracle really. He became proof that it was hip to be square. Crooning those old tunes and he couldn't be cooler. It's not just grandparents who love him, it's teenagers too. He is rather expert at embracing extremes.
The catalyst for this was extreme pain. Everything changed because his relationship with former fiancé, Oscar nominated Devil Wears Prada actress Emily Blunt, fell apart. He blamed himself. He went into therapy.
The last time we met he was giddy with love for Blunt and had just written the song Everything for her. 'God. Everything has changed since then. I am not in love with Emily any more. I was with her brother Sebastian only a couple of days ago. I'm just in touch with him. It would be weird for me to be in touch with her and with her family. I have my own family and I have my own mother-in-law and father-in-law and my beautiful wife.'
His wife is Argentinian model and actress Luisana Lopitato. They married over two ago. 'When I met her my wife's English was non-existent. Now her English is flawless. I study Spanish but she tells me I sound like a caveman.
'We met when I was doing a show in Argentina. At that point I was still hurting with the whole ex thing. I came with my grandfather and my Uncle Butch and we'd gone to get my car after the show and I saw this woman from across the way. I said to my grandfather that's the most beautiful woman I've ever seen.'
He tells his grandfather everything. His grandfather has been everything to him. When he was a boy he would sing the old standards the old man liked. His grandfather had absolute faith in him. He offered to provide his plumbing services free if a club would give his grandson a chance.
Bublé took those chances and worked relentlessly for years before the first signs of success. His album Call Me Irresponsible and the follow-up Crazy Love were both Number 1 and multi-platinum sellers across the world. Last year he did a sell-out UK arena tour, tickets sold at the rate of 1,500 per minute.
Despite all of this success he felt 'a complete fraud'. He told me that last time we met. 'One day I am the king, the next day I'm the pauper.' Today he puts it a different way. He just didn't like himself very much, and it took the break-up with Blunt to get him to seek help.
He finds it hard to actually say the word Emily. The relationship was powerful yet perhaps even more powerful in its demise. When I interviewed Blunt earlier this year she pulled a similar contorted face. She is far les open about her emotions but her face at the mention of his name showed its impact on her too had been severe.
Did she end it? 'It ended through both of us being young and naïve and making silly mistakes. There was not some kind of thing that ended it. It was that it ended. It was about me looking in the mirror and saying 'Michael, wake up'. I never lived in the moment, not ever. Not in my shows. Not in anything. It was out of insecurity and me worrying what would happen. I thought, you know, you could like yourself more. I hired therapists. I'm not embarrassed to say this. I fucked up.
'What happened after the ex was probably the most important time of my life. When we were done I was fucked. There was no better word than that. I was devastated. I took time to do therapy. I HAD to.' His voice resonates with panic as he emphasizes the words 'had to'.
'I knew if I didn't change I would never be happy or content in my own skin with who I was. It was the worst thing that ever happened to me and the greatest thing that ever happened to me.'
He bought books on how to be happy, his favourite being Eckhart Tolle's The Power Of Now. He readdressed his eating, which was either no carbs or spaghetti carbonara every day. He started going to the gym and stopped comfort eating so that he feels comfortable in his sharp suits.
'Nowadays I try to eat healthily and work out every day. I'm kind of addicted. I like doing weights. I was having a hard time and it made me feel better. But speaking of what's changed, I'm not the same guy. My wife is very conservative, so a lot of things I did I don't do now. I'm quite disciplined.'
Extremes again, very wild, very disciplined, comfortable being either. 'When I'm on tour I can't be smoking, drinking and partying every night. I don't recuperate like I used to. I've got to be an athlete. I can do it every once in a while, have some drinks on the bus. I started smoking an electric cigarette. My wife breaks my balls about the cigarettes. You might as well be smoking a pencil, but it feels like you've got something.'
What about the smoking spliff? 'Gone. She hates it. And it wasn't bringing value into my life. And now for the most part I like the place I'm in. I don't need to be in an altered place.
It was around a year after the break-up with Blunt that he first saw Luisana Lopitato after his concert. 'I was wrapped up in melancholy because as the police escorted us out I thought I would never see her again. Then there was a party at my hotel. I was drinking a lot more at the time because that's how I was dealing with what I was dealing with and the president of the Argentinian record company said that he would like me to meet Argentina's most famous actor and actress and in she walked. But the problem was she walked in with this 6'3" Brad Pitt looking dude. I thought this was the worst ever. The girl of my dreams walks in with her boyfriend.
'She didn't talk English but he did, so we had a long conversation. I didn't want to be rude and hit on her. If someone did that to my girlfriend or wife I would not be a happy boy. That would get into a fistfight. It's a code between boys.
'I was getting hammered at the time and by the time I had my third double scotch I was slurring my words telling him they made such a good couple. And then he finally said, "We are not a couple". The girl is texting her mother saying I've met Michael Bublé and he is gay… Actually I think I might be a tortillera (means lesbian). I'm a torta (check Spanish) in a male body. So then I started to talk to her and asked if I could spend time with her. She said she had just come out of a relationship and was not ready to get into one. I said, "You're my wife, you just don't know it yet. I'm going to come back and marry you".
'We emailed each other for months, friendly emails. She was taking lessons in English and I was taking lessons in Spanish. I finally went down there and met her family. I said to her that her family were exactly the same as my family. She just gave me a look. I'm sure every boy in her life has tried to sweet talk her. But it was important for me. We have the same family. Finally when she came to Vancouver she got it. Our sisters can be crazy but there's lots of love and it's a very warm and connected family. We are Italian and my wife too is a dual citizen. She is Argentina and Italy and I am Canada and Italy.'So a year goes by and I'm mad and crazy for her. I asked her father's permission to marry her at the table and we had a big beautiful Argentinian wedding.'
His wife lives mostly in their house in Argentina for her work. 'It's 20 minutes outside Buenos Aires in a gated community. It's not a secure country and I have bodyguards. It takes 17 hours to get there from Vancouver or LA though. We have a house in LA and we go to nice restaurants. The house in Vancouver where all my family are together. And then we go to Argentina and we have her family over all the time.
Bublé loves to cook for them. We discuss his recipe for risotto with white asparagus and rosemary, and the way he likes to roast his chickens, and how when he first met his in-laws he made them French toast with cinnamon and it's all they wanted to eat for two days.
He presents a very warm but passionate relationship with his wife. 'I love going out with my wife and having a couple of glasses of wine. But before when I was going out a lot I never lost control or got to the point where I did something terrible. I just wanted to escape my reality, whereas now I like my reality. It wasn't meeting my wife that changed this. It was the break-up with the ex. I'd worked on myself and when I met her I felt worthy of love. It's hard to feel worthy of someone's love when you are insecure. You think why are they with me?
'We all sit there with something inside of us thinking you're going to fail, he or she is going to leave you. What I didn't know was I had the power not to listen to that. The way to do that for me was to sit here, feel this bed beneath my butt, listen to the air conditioner and look you in the eye and be present with you. I can't change what I did and I have no control over what is going to happen, only how I handle it, and it's made me a better husband and a better man with my family.
'I was always a bit of a spaz, always anxious there was somewhere I had to go. Now I feel I don't have that. On stage it's even made me ten times better. I don't try to be Mr Cool or Mr Suave Guy. Just myself.'
He's always seemed himself on stage to me. 'Then I tricked you. I was trying to play the part of someone I thought was cooler. Sometimes I hear shows back and I realise I talk weird. "Hi everybody. It's nice to see you",' he says sounding like an oily smooth 1950s game show host.
'It's not that I'm content now. In fact I'm far more scared of failure than I ever was. You're only as good as your last song. You've got to stay hungry.'
How hard is it keeping a relationship going when he's on the move so much? 'My wife rarely travels with me. She loves working as much as I do. She's about to make a couple of movies, and that's cool for me. iChat really helps. I'll finish a show, come to my hotel room and I'll say to her "Do you want to watch a movie?" And we'll rent a movie together. I'll get a bowl of popcorn and I'll sit in bed and we'll play the movie at exactly the same time. She can see me and I can see her. At the end she might say "OK mi amore, I'm going to sleep" and we keep the iChat going on all night and we sleep together. I know it's very strange, but it keeps me connected in a very virtual way.'
So they can watch each other sleeping in different parts of the planet? 'Yeh. And if it disconnects one of us in our sleep will reach over and press the call button so I'll be passed out and I'll hear brrring, brrring, and I will push answer. It's a nice feeling. This happens most nights.
'Lou and I talk openly that we feel sorry for people who have to see each other every day because it gets tedious. If I've been away I miss her like crazy. We take advantage of our time together. We go for walks, see movies, sit with the family, have dinners.
'Last year for my birthday my wife was working on a movie so I wasn't expecting to see her. There was a package at my door and it had a tape recorder in it. It said play me and follow the rose petals which were outside my door. She was telling me she missed me and to have a wonderful birthday and I kept walking and I got to this whole breakfast area that was set up with champagne and all the stuff I love and then my wife walked out from behind a bush. She flew 16 hours to be with me for a few hours. Awesome. Now we've been married close to three years so she'll probably just say Happy Birthday. I spoil her. I really love shopping for her. I love buying her new outfits. Or a pair or Manolo Blahniks.
This year he wanted to spend his birthday with his grandfather Mitch. 'I flew him from Vancouver to have open-heart surgery at Cedars Sinai. It was touch and go for a few weeks. It was scary, but he's doing amazing.'
He reaches for his phone and shows me a picture of his grandfather who is handsome and looks like a much older twin. 'He's my best buddy. Last night for two hours I lay in bed with my grandpa and grandma and my mum and I was taking singing requests. I can never be with them enough. That's why I'm so looking forward to Christmas. I spend it in the same place every year in Vancouver with my family. We put Ave Maria on the record for grandpa.'
Bublé insists this is not just another Christmas record. 'It's the most important record I've ever done. Some people are just Christmas people. They thrive in the sentiment. My mother used to play White Christmas from early October through to December 25. I couldn't get enough of it.'
He bursts into Jingle Bells riding the bed like a sleigh. 'I'm just really sentimental about Christmas and the way my family was. Every October when I smell the air change I get excited. Most people I know are just kinder to each other.'
He says he will not ask for anything for Christmas 'except a bunch of cool socks. There's nothing I need really.' What is he giving? 'Everything. For my grandpa, time. We'll go fishing and watch hockey games. For my wife, I will give her a thousand little things. She's 24 but like 12. Actually in some ways she's like 50. More mature than me, but she likes me to go to Mac and I buy her a bunch of make-up and she likes me wrapping it individually.'
What makes him happy? 'My family and hockey.' He owns his favourite hockey team, Vancouver Giants. 'They won the cup a few years ago. I like any sport. I'm like a dog. If you throw a ball I'll fetch. I love watching hockey. And I used to play it. I've always been a really competitive dude. I'd rather lose a game 10-9 than win a game 10-2.'
Has his extreme success surprised him? 'No. It surprised me that it took this long. I know that sounds terrible but I had such a good time connecting to an audience I was just throwing a party. How could people not want to come?'
I see another part of the caviar/hot dog syndrome. There's extreme confidence and none at all. A couple of days later we meet again. He wants to talk about who else have been my interviewees. He perks up when we talk about Anjelica Huston and Jack Nicholson and how their open relationship became messy. 'I've been in some of those relationships, those open ones. I liked them, but guess what, they don't work. Someone always gets hurt. I got hurt and I've done hurting. Open relationships are like communism. In theory a good thing, but when it gets put into place everything falls apart. It's hard to disconnect yourself like that. And those famous people who think it's all cool… it's more cool for one of them than the other.'
Love and its capacity to devastate is not only what he sings about, it's an unstoppable theme for him. 'Love has to be unbalanced. It's the game. The man has to love the woman more so he's always chasing. My wife is playing it right. I'm like a stupid dog chasing after her car. Roo roo roo roo roo,' he barks in a kind of half howl.
'If you really love somebody why would you want them to be with somebody else. For me it would feel weird for me to feel another woman's lips. I think about it. I see a good looking girl and I think, "ooh look at that girl". But it would be weird for me to go and do anything about it. It would be strange.
'My wife is always doing these movies and TV shows where she's kissing some good looking guy. I ask her what it feels like. She says there's 50 people watching and there's nothing romantic. But I don't know the feeling of kissing without it being romantic. I know my wife. I know her lips. And it would be weird to feel another pair of lips. Totally foreign.'
Did he ever feel that way about other women? 'No. I didn't I was a different person. I was insecure. I'm not proud of how I acted. I was reckless with other people's hearts. I didn't like myself and I didn't trust myself. People are stupid. They make the same mistakes. I've done that. I kept doing it and then I tried to learn from it.'
What he seems to be saying is that in the past because he was insecure in a relationship he needed the reassurance of other hot women. 'My wife is hot. She's a hotty p'totty and I like her. I don't trust a lot of women, they lie. In high school girls would lie till their last breath and say they never made with Michael Bublé. And now I have friends who will be sitting in a hair salon and this girl who I never met is talking about how much we were doing it.'
It's as if he's still perplexed that the Michael Bublé no one wanted to admit they kissed is still the same person and lurks somewhere within. In many ways he's always had huge self-esteem and almost no self-confidence. You sense sometimes that he can't believe his luck that he's married this hot Argentinian actress and they are thinking of starting a family. 'We're planning next Christmas. My wife is such a planner.'
With thoughts of birth come thoughts of death. 'It's been a tough year for my grandpa. My Uncle Butch, we used to call them the sunshine boys, they came on every tour, and he passed away this year. I took him out of the hospital and hired nurses and had them tape all the hockey games which he would watch in the daytime. I miss my Uncle Butchie. He was a vibrant guy.' He's smiling as he regales me with some of Uncle Butchie's dreadful jokes, but you know he's thinking of his grandfather who has been the most profound influence on his life. The first time he ever sang was when he heard Bing Crosby's White Christmas. And that's why his Christmas album is the most important one he's ever done. It's not just Ave Maria that's for his grandpa, it's everything.

Michael Bublé is wearing a doll size leather jacket, a teeny red T-shirt and the skinniest dark jeans. I am shocked at how much he’s shrunk and tell him that his ankles are the size of my wrists. He looks pleased.
‘I suppose that I am supposed to be little. I was much much bigger and I really had to eat a lot to get like that. I was chunky. I look back at pictures at me,’ he shakes his head. ‘I remember seeing the cover of Call Me Irresponsible (his 2007 third and pivotal album) and thinking “Ooh, you’re fat”.’ It wasn’t so much that he was fat he was unhappy and eating to block out misery and insecurity.
‘Like everybody, I go up and down. I’ll probably put on ten, take off ten. My wife is really healthy so I’ve got used to eating her healthy food.
‘I used to eat pizzas and burgers and McDonalds. Now I’ll eat a nice piece of fish and vegetables. You just get used to it and you start eating like that all the time. It becomes the new normal.’
Bublé has always been a man of extremes, he ate too much pasta and loved too much and too many women. All that changed when he met his wife, Argentinian model/actress Luisana Lopilato, in 2009. They married 2 years later and are now expecting their first child, a boy, due in July.
When they first met she didn’t speak much English and he no Spanish. It was one of those coup de foudre moments. They met backstage at one of his concerts in Argentina introduced by the president of his Argentinian record company.
At the time he was recovering from his break-up with British actress Emily Blunt. He and Luisana took things slowly and carefully, a first for Bublé.
We are in a homely suit at the Sunset Marquis. It’s a classic rock and roll hotel where televisions have definitely been thrown into the swimming pool and late night tantrums are commonplace. But not with Bublé, not any more.

His latest album, To Be Loved, is seeped with cosy contentment. It’s a happy record. No pain. It’s not been an easy road to get there. He has described his break-up with Blunt as the” worst and the greatest thing” that’s ever happened to him. He bought books on how to be happy. He saw a therapist.

Then he met his future wife but continued with his therapist. ‘I married a girl who doesn’t drink, except once in a while. She goes to the gym every day, eats good. It’s part of her pattern so it becomes part of your pattern. It becomes your lifestyle.’

Does he never have emotional cravings for cheese? He laughs, ‘Let’s be honest, I could live on bread and cheese for every day of my life. If someone told me every day from now on you have to live on bread and cheese I would say “Yesss!”.

The difference is last time we met he gave me his family recipe for spaghetti carbonara – his grandfather is Italian and he has an Italian passport. It had gallons of cream in it.
‘I don’t make it any more. Pasta made me feel yucky, bloated and gassy. Maybe I was allergic to wheat. It’s something I’ve wondered about. I don’t drink any more either. That’s a lot to do with it. You are who you hang out with and my wife doesn’t drink and is very healthy, but four years ago I was tiny, so tiny when I went through the break-up. I was drinking every day, doing nothing, smoking cigarettes and I was really skinny. But I wasn’t healthy skinny I was heart attack skinny. I’m the kind of kind who if I drink I lose my appetite, boom, and if I have a bite to eat I don’t want to drink, I feel full.’

It sounds like he wasn’t eating or drinking for nourishment but to fill a hole of awkwardness, regret and insecurity‘I have never had a drink because I enjoyed the taste. And I don’t do one drink. I’m like Barney from The Simpsons, once it begins it begins.’ The trick is that these days he doesn’t let it begin.

The promotion schedule for this record includes flying from London to Melbourne and back to LA without an overnight stopover in either city. Just enough time to perform a show. He’s always been driven. A huge work ethic handed down from his father Louis, a fisherman, and his grandfather Mitch, a plumber. It must be hard at the top. Surely he’s scared of using his status of being one of the world’s top selling artists? He’s sold over 40 million records and when tickets went on sale for his tour in the UK (he plays six nights at the O2 from June 30) they sold out at the rate of 1,500 per minute. Everyone loves Bublé. He spans generations, both cool and uncool.

‘I’m not thinking like that. I’ve got the baby coming and then I might take some time off or I’ll try acting so I can have my wife and baby with me on set. Right now my priority is all those fans, those people who’ve supported me.’

Bublé doesn’t believe in getting something for nothing, he believes in thanking people wholeheartedly. He believes he has a duty. ‘I used to open for Jay Leno and I used to say “Jay, what is the secret?” and he’d say “Go to their back yards, don’t go to the hubs and expect everyone to come to you. Go to their back yards and when you are in those little c cities that’s how you build relationships, that’s how you build loyalty. And that’s the truth.

‘You can’t put out a record and say Germany, France, Japan, thanks for buying my record. Of course I love you but I’m not going on tour. You’ve got to, you’ve got to go,’ he says with urgency.

I ask him if he finds it hard to say no to things other than too much cheese? ‘Yes, I do.’ Is there part of him that’s now completely reassured with his success or is part of him thinking what if this record doesn’t sell, what if people don’t turn up?

‘Do you know what’s weird, that’s not happening that insecurity. Everything has changed. It’s all changed because of the baby. I’m having a difficult time doing these interviews. I’m proud of the record, it’s a beautiful record, possibly my best record. It’s different and I was brave but being brave stemmed from not caring. That sounds cold but I’ve got bigger fish to fry.

‘When my manager says I wonder if we’re going to sell two million or eight million I’m thinking yeh, either is a great bonus, but let’s hope my wife is healthy and my kid is healthy. I’m 37-years-old and I’m starting to think what’s it all about. It surely isn’t about how many records I can sell or how many stadiums I can fill.

‘This has given me something else, a very different attitude. I’m saying I’m going to do this and if they don’t like it they don’t like it. My perspective has definitely changed. I have no drama to tell you about. I wish I could say these songs came from misery or heartbreak. This was a happy record, truly a joyous occasion.’

It is of course a wonderfully sentimental record. When I heard his version of Young At Heart it made me cry. Bublé has always loved old people. He is extremely close to his grandfather. He still loves to do family sleepovers where they all lie on the couch and sing the old standards together.

‘That song is special to me. I’ve been co-writing with my friend Alan who is a genius, he’s a wonderful arranger, he is my piano player, my musical arranger, my everything. That sounds gay but I would go gay for him. I love you Alan Chang. So he wrote this beautiful arrangement. By the way his girlfriend wouldn’t be happy with me going gay with him.

We were going to go to East West Studios here in LA to put the track down. We had all the musicians, all the strings, everything was ready. We had a bar set up so that when the musicians and I were all done we could all have a drink together so I could thank them. And the night before that day my mother called and said “Mike, your grandpa is not good.” So I just told them all “I’m sorry I can’t be there” and I just left and flew home to Vancouver.

‘They did the recording of the band and a week later I was to sing the vocal. My grandpa pulled through, he was okay. So the next week I sang the vocal and called the producer Bob Rock and said this is just not going to make the record. We are going to have to do something else. He said why and I said it’s emotionless, it’s cold and dead. Everyone was crushed because it was such a beautiful arrangement but I said I’m not feeling it.

‘About a month later I was in the studio and wanted to record a Peggy Lee song called Come Dance With Me. The producer said, “Why don’t we do Young At Heart again while we’re in the studio?” So I thought about my grandpa and I thought about myself. It was the first dance at our wedding. I love the song. And I though okay. And it just goes to show how different it was a few weeks later. I’ve just Skyped grandpa now. I Skype him all the time. I thought about him while I was recording it because I could. Before I was too upset. I smiled through the whole thing. I did it in two takes. It’s not perfect but there’s the emotion in it.

‘It just shows if your head is not in it and your heart is not in it it’s just not there.’

That’s the thing about Bublé, his head and his heart, his whole soul, is always in it. He pours his whole being into those songs so you feel him, you know him. He becomes an emotional touchstone. It’s not about the songs, the voice, it’s about how he puts himself in your heart.
On this album he’s written more of his own songs. Does it worry him that his own songs have to stand up against timeless classics? ‘Yes, sometimes. I just took my favourite songs but for every album you record you could make 50 others. But for this one I was in a good place and I wanted to make it authentic and gentle.
‘The producer Bob Rock agreed that this is a soul record. This is Phil Spector wall of sound. We got as many people in the room as possible, a small room. You hear every note, every background singer and Bob as a producer, he understands everything. His job is to listen to the artist and bring his vision into reality and he does that. I would turn gay for him too. Especially with that long blonde hair of his. I could ride him into the sunset. I would always joke that I was going to tickle him. I love to get tickled. My wife would be sitting with me tickling like this,’ he demonstrates a tickling motion with his slender fingers, ‘and I would go Bob, tickle me. And he would go, fuck off.’
At the mention of his baby he smiles so hard that even his cheekbones, now angular and sharp, seem to round with pride.

‘He’ll be born in Vancouver and raised in Argentina and Vancouver. Mum will only speak Spanish and dad will only speak English. I am a proud Canadian of Italian heritage and he will have all these heritages.’

He wrote the song Close Your Eyes with the wonderful Canadian singer songwriter Jann Arden, and he wrote it about his wife. ‘Jann is the funniest woman I’ve ever met and I love writing songs with her. This song happened one day, I sat at the piano. I can never write sober, but I started to think about my wife and how much she means to me and how much she helps carry me, you know. How she shares the load with me. I started to think about all women and how strong they are and how important they are in the life of a man and this song is about how we depend on them. It wasn’t just that I was missing her it’s that I get sentimental and I was just thinking; you’re always the one that pulls us through. And people call women the weaker sex. How foolish is that This is what this person is to me. All of these things that are strength and support.
‘I notice the stability my wife has given me in simple ways. In other relationships I would think let’s go on vacation and the girl would say, “Let’s go to Hawaii”, and I would say who do we call, what couple do we get to go with us? It’s like I always needed someone else there. With my wife it’s just we’re good together.
‘I had my father and my mum come to LA this weekend. We had a few drinks and I was sitting talking to them and I said, “39 years. How do you make it work?” My dad said, “I love your mum. But more importantly I like her too.” And that’s really something.
‘Lu is my best friend. Honestly, easily, she is. And I didn’t realise that if you are with somebody in a romantic capacity that they would become your family. I’ve always separated family. I thought romance and friendship was linked but different.’
Do you think perhaps the nature of romance is that you were idealising someone that was unreachable in the past. ‘Yes, and I think it was more obsession than love and I’ve lived that a million times.’
Do you feel that when those past relationships became more familiar and more friendly you lost interest in them romantically? ‘Yes, exactly.’ Do you think that some of the past relationships, although you loved them, you didn’t actually like them? ‘Yes, absolutely.
‘I went to dinner last night and I was alone. It was couples, couples, couples. All I could think of was I wish she was here because I would be funnier, more talkative and more interesting, although the truth is they’d probably like her more than me. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone out to dinner and people said, “Mike, we love you, but we really love her”. And I love that, it’s wonderful for me.’
There is no doubt that what drove Bublé in the past was a need to be loved, and now that he feels that he is loved the dynamic of everything he does is different. I got the impression that he would never want to displease his record company even though he is their biggest selling artist.
He wrote a song with Tom Jackson called I Got It Easy. He tells me the story to illustrate the profound change that has gone on within. ‘We were on my tour bus having a party, my wife and everybody. Like I said, I don’t drink so much any more, but we were having a cocktail and we just came up with this song. It coincides with things I think are happening all over the world – economic crisis, disasters, shootings. There’s all of this darkness. But for the rest of us if you can afford to download a track from a CD then you’ve got it easy.

‘They told me that people wouldn’t like I’ve Got It Easy. The record company didn’t like it. They said it’s dark and you don’t sound like you. It’s not a hit song, it’s not going to get on the radio. But part of the new bravery I feel is I said, Maybe it’s not a radio song. For me it’s a thoughtful, personal, important song. I said to my manager, I want to grow. And he said, you write hit songs, why do you have to grow? He called the record company and said, whatever we have to pay for the mechanicals on the final song, we want it. I told the record company if it doesn’t get on the radio you deal with it. It’s a polarising song. My mum hates it, my sisters love it.’

Did he call the album To Be Loved because that’s how he feels now? ‘I wish I’d come up with the title. ‘My manager Bruce Allen came up with the title. We call him The Colonel, like Elvis’s Colonel. He’s managed me since I was 25 and Bryan Adams since he was 17. And Jann Arden and Bob Rock as well. He got emotional to see his record family together. He said, “I’ve got my family here. The kids are all together and making this beautiful thing. I’m getting sentimental. Isn’t it wonderful to be loved.”

Does he feel loved? ‘Yes, I’m very content, although I miss my wife. I don’t like that I’m missing the pregnancy part. She is in Argentina making a movie and doing a shoot for the lingerie company she is the face of. She tells me, “Mi amore, I have a big tummy.”
He shows me a picture on his phone of his pregnant wife. She is blonde with a goofy smile and pregnant belly. ‘Look at how happy she is to show me this. I think she’s sticking it out. She’s definitely a rambunctious girl.’ She also has giant breasts. ‘She does! Always! Giant!’ he says with a giant smile.

‘That’s the question most people ask. Are they real? They are real of course. They are bigguns though…… Everything makes me happy: my family, listening to music, dancing, life, hockey. Hockey is my number one passion. It would overpower music. Playing it, watching it, eating it, drinking it, I just love it.’

He tells me he could chat all day. He’s never been a nervous interviewee. He’s always liked to share and to make the interviewer laugh. You wonder how long he can make life on the roadwork now that he has the option of stability and fatherhood. He says he’s serious about acting.
‘I have anxiety sometimes when I think about new things I want to try. My first choice would be a drama, a serious drama. I wouldn’t want to do a musical or comedy. But I’ve made a record and it’s coming out in 42 countries.’
While his wife comes out to a show here and there he’s not fond of other people’s women on the road. He doesn’t for instance like women crew or musicians.
‘I say, “There’s no relationships on the road” and they say to me, “Of course we’re not going to have relationships. We are professionals and we have a boyfriend at home.” The next think you know they’re bonking the sound guy. And then the sound guy is fighting over another girl and it becomes a drama. It’s an incestuous life. Let’s make it easy. Every time I’ve had female crew we’ve had serious break-ups and yellings. Obviously I love women. It’s not about not loving women. It’s about I don’t want to be surrounded by drama.’

There was a time not so long ago when he courted drama, he danced to it like a moth to the flame. ‘You know what else I don’t like? I don’t like shimmery saxophones.’ What do you mean? He does his impersonation of a shimmery saxophone. ‘They creep me out. They remind me of The Muppets in a bad way. I don’t like it when I’m on the road and the brass section starts improvising. It’s like when someone takes a poop on a piece of paper and goes this is abstract art.

He and his wife have recently started a charity called lendafreehand.com to help dogs about to be euthanised because their owners can no longer afford to feed them. Bublé has always felt the underdog. ‘I am the underdog. I’ve sold a bunch of records. I’ve never been asked to be on the Grammys or any of that stuff. I do big business. I sell more records at any point than, well, I am in the top five touring acts in the world. But I don’t show up at the parties. I don’t have a reality TV show. I’m not seen shopping in Beverly Hills. There’s a difference between being famous and being a celebrity. Maybe I’m just too normal for everything like that. But my manager always says, “Hey kid, keep being the underdog. You’re doing the right thing.”

I walk in to the giant hotel suite where I am to meet Michael Bublé. Giant bed, giant overstuffed couch, giant TV, but no Bublé. He’s hiding behind the door and jumps out to surprise me. He is giggling and excited, his arms and legs looking skinny and agile.

He is happy about his new record To Be Loved. But that’s not what’s making his heart dance. He has just found out that he’s having a baby with his Argentinian wife Luisana Lopilato who he married in March 2011.

His nut-brown eyes sparkle. ‘The baby changes everything. It comes first. This is truly a joyous occasion.’

I’ve seen Bublé ecstatic before, but this is different. This is not a high that’s been preceded by a low. This is grown-up contentment. He’s 38 and is ‘ready and excited for fatherhood.’

Last time we met over a year ago he said, ‘We are planning a baby for next Christmas. My wife’s a big planner.’

In fact it was Christmas when she discovered they were pregnant. ‘I was genuinely shocked about the baby. We’d been planning…..but hey, good luck planning, that kind of thing. And also my wife lied to me. Well, she didn’t exactly lie, but she knew she was pregnant but she didn’t tell me but she wanted to come to Vancouver and tell me in person to surprise me.

‘I thought, okay, she’s got her period the chance for this month is over because I’d asked her, anything happening? “No, honey. It’s not this time,” she said. He mimics her Argentinian accent. ‘So I was in shock completely.’
The first person he told was Reece Whitherspnoon.
One of the songs on the album is the classic Something Stupid, which has always been one of his favourite songs. ‘I had it in my head I was going to do a duet and I was thinking let’s get someone in the music industry who isn’t who you would think it would be. Let’s get Rihanna or Katy Perry. My manager said what about Reece Witherspoon. I am infatuated with Walk The Line. I loved her in that movie and I loved her voice, a little Peggy Lee-ish. Anyway, she was interested but she was nervous because it’s not her world.

‘I called her up the day I found out I was having a baby. No one else in the world knew but I told her first. That’s weird, isn’t it ? it was an incredible day and I just found and I was so overwhelmed. And I knew she’d just had her baby. I said, Reece, I’ve got to tell you this before we even get into a conversation. I’m having a baby. She was excited for me.

‘We talked and talked about baby stuff and then I just said, listen hon’, I’d like to have you on this record. I said, look honey, this is huge. This is the greatest day of my life and if you would do this it would awesome, it would be the icing on the cake. If you’re not comfortable with it I still love you. I get that you are nervous and it’s not in your comfort zone, but if you could just come in, if we don’t like it we won’t use it. She came in and she was perfect the first take.

‘ The second she opened her mouth I was so chuffed. It really was the icing on the cake. She’d obviously done a lot of work and prepared really well. It was the very last song we recorded on the record.’

He talks very fast and excitedly about the baby. He takes out his phone and shows me a picture of his wife wearing a brightly coloured bikini top and a slightly pregnant belly. At the time he didn’t know if it was a boy or a girl and we have since learned it is a boy.

‘I didn’t want to find out but my wife does. She’s the boss. She’s carrying the baby so she gets her say.’

I had read that if it was a girl it was going to be called Bella Bublé but I’ve since found out that’s the name of his publicist Susan Leon’s dog. Her old dog had just died and she was devastated ‘So I got this little puppy. We were working late and Susan was about to go but I told her oh just wait a minute, I’ve got somebody bringing something. The door knocked and there was this little puppy and I said “I love you Susan”. So the name Bella was already taken.

‘My wife loves the Twilight Saga so I was worried she wanted to call the baby Bella or Edward. My wife knew she was carrying a boy. “It’s a boy”.

He mocks her accent again. She kept saying before she knew officially ‘I’ll take either, I’ll take a healthy hermaphrodite.
‘He’ll be born in Vancouver and raised in Argentina and Vancouver. Mum will only speak Spanish and dad will only speak English. I am a proud Canadian of Italian heritage and he will have all these heritages.’

The last time Bublé and I met he ordered caviar and a hot dog from the room service menu, a kind of metaphor that he is an extreme character. Today it’s a simple coffee with a little cream. He has worked hard on himself with a therapist to moderate his extremes but the love of Luisana has helped more than any therapy ever could.

I remember when he was crazy in love, hence the album title Crazy Love, with the British actress Emily Blunt. He wrote the song Everything for her which went on to be a worldwide smash, but his heart smashed too when the relationship fell apart.

‘It would be weird for me to be in touch with her and her family as I have my own family now. He refers to his siblings-in-law as cunadas. He certainly speaks a lot more Spanish than he used to. He’s been taking lessons. ‘My wife tells me I still sound like a cave man.’

They met at an after show of a concert of his in Argentina. ‘There was a party at my hotel. I was drinking a lot more at the time because I was dealing with what I was dealing with and the president of the Argentinian record company said he would like me to meet Argentina’s most famous actor and actress. She walked in with a Brad Pitt looking dude and I thought this is the worst ever, the girl of my dreams walks in with her boyfriend.

‘She didn’t speak English but he did so we had a long conversation. I didn’t want to be rude and hit on her. If someone did that to my girlfriend or wife I would not be a happy boy. It’s code between boys. I was getting hammered and slurring my words and finally he said, “We are not a couple.”

‘Meanwhile Lu is texting her mother saying “I have met Michael Bublé and he is gay.” Then we started talking. She had just come out of a relationship and was not ready to get into one. I said to her, “You’re my wife. You just don’t know it yet. I’m coming back to marry you.” And that’s exactly what he did although she looked at him a little incredulous at the time.

He wrote the song Haven’t Met You Yet for her. People would joke to him in the street “Have you met her yet then?”. He knew in his heart he absolutely had.

‘I asked her father’s permission to marry her and we had a big beautiful Argentinian wedding. She lives mostly in their gated house in Argentina, just outside Buenos Aires. He has a house in Vancouver close to his beloved parents and grandparents and a house in LA. He says they are with each other whenever they can be. Sometimes if they have to be apart they watch a movie together in their separate beds in separate parts of the world.

‘I'll get a bowl of popcorn and sit in bed and we’ll play the movie at exactly the same time. She can see me and I can see her. At the end she’ll say “Mi amore, I am going to sleep” but we keep the iChat going on all night as we sleep. I know it sounds very strange but it keeps me connected in a virtual way. And if it disconnects one of us in our sleep we’ll reach over and press the call button. I might be passed out but I’ll hear brrrng brrrng and I will press answer. It’s a nice feeling.
‘My wife is very conservative so lots of things I used to do I don’t do. I don’t drink very often and I eat very healthily. For the most part I like the place I’m in. I don’t need to be in an altered place. What happened to me after the ex was probably the most important time of my life. When we were done I was devastated. I had to do therapy, I had to. I knew if I didn’t change I’d never be happy or content in my own skin. It was the worst thing that ever happened to me and the greatest thing. It ended through both of us being young and naïve and making silly mistakes. I looked in the mirror and said wake up. I did so many things out of insecurity…’

Clearly he may still have anxious moments but that obsession for filling a deep dark space with spaghetti and cocktails has long gone. He doesn’t stop being grateful. He doesn’t stop working hard, but perhaps not just as obsessively.
He had his mother and father with him in LA last week but they don’t like to stay too long because carers for his grandparents. Does your wife come with you to LA? ’Yes, she comes everywhere with me whenever she can.’ She does not however come on tour with him very often. ‘I don’t like to travel with women. I don’t like to have women in the band. We are a family and we have this perfect dynamic and I don’t want to add something in. every time I have women on the road it ends up in tears.’

I imagine he likes to keep his work life a little separate from his domestic life. ‘But if I’m away I miss her like crazy. If you really love somebody why would you want to be with somebody else? These days if I see a good looking girl I think oh look at that girl, but I would never do anything about it. I was a different person before. I was insecure. I’m not proud of how I acted. I was reckless with people’s hearts, but I have learnt from it.

‘Am I happy now? Yes. And I’m happy making her happy. ‘You know my wife is a big advocate for animals. She’s rescued thousands of dogs in Argentina, so for Christmas we bought part of a company called Freehand. In the US they euthanize three million dogs every year because people can’t afford to feed them. For every bag of dog food you buy in the store we donate a bag to the pound. It’s like a pound for pound. We don’t pay for advertising. Celebrities help us by getting the word out. We have a website called lendafreehand.com. My wife has eight dogs and six cats. I’ll come home and there’ll be the scariest one-eyed dog looking at me and she’d be “Isn’t he so cute?” and I’ll be “ it’s the hound from hell.”

‘There are so many charities and worthwhile causes that the only thing people have to do here is buy their dog some dog food.’

He asks me please can I mention the dogs. He says he’d rather I mentioned the dogs than his latest album because it would make his wife happy. His wife and mini Bublé have changed his perspective and made him feel loved.
*To To Be Loved is out on April 15.

There is nothing that can give a better glimpse into Michael Jackson himself than meeting his mother Katherine. They have the same whispery high voice. The same hunted look.
The same air of a person who has endured much, yet has a sense of naivety. More than anything else there is a feeling that she is not quite of this world.
I am inside the Jackson house. The décor is chintzy faux Versailles with moments of 1970s browns and oranges. There are paintings of princesses, lots of sculptures of giant hands, galloping horses and the odd giraffe. There is a Lladro style ornament depicting Michael Jackson holding up the world with doves and children. It's ornate and sentimental, a bit like Michael.
I walk out past a row of children's bikes - a reminder that she now has custody of her three grandchildren - and a swimming pool, in view of majestic mountains and the California blue sky to get to Katherine Jackson's quarters. I had to go through double-gated security to get to this house 45 minutes from Hollywood.
She greets me warily but sweetly. She's dressed in a pale blue jacket and black slacks. Her skin looks much younger than her 81 years. Her eyes are dark and dart around. She seems to be frisking me for my soul. The Jacksons are naturally suspicious and they all believe in various conspiracy theories surrounding the death of her son and their brother. More of that later.
She has just come off the phone from her son Jermaine who has been all over the news vehemently opposed to the Michael Forever - The Tribute Concert that is happening at the Millennium Stadium, Cardiff. It will be a global tribute to Jackson that will be televised and downloaded to more countries than any other show in the history of pop (so they claim). Cardiff was chosen because they needed a big stadium with a roof.
JLS will perform with Marlon, Tito and Jackie Jackson. And Beyoncé will wear a Michael wig and dance, introduced by the Jackson children - Prince Michael, 14, Paris, 13, and Blanket (passport name Prince Michael II), 10.
The concert is one more thing that has caused friction within the family because Jermaine decreed it was inappropriate to stage the concert at the same time as Dr Conrad Murray goes on trial for the involuntary manslaughter of Michael Jackson.
Katherine Jackson seems keen to diminish the spectre of the sad Michael Jackson plagued with demons and eccentricities and get on with celebrating his memory and cherishing his talent.
What does she feel about Jermaine speaking out so forcefully against the concert? Has this divided the family?
'I don't understand why my son feels that way,' says Katherine in the soft, whispery voice that makes me have to lean in very close to hear her.
'Jermaine feels it's not the right time because of the trial coming up. Michael's been gone two years now. They kept postponing the trial. We didn't know when exactly it was coming around and I don't see anything wrong. This is nothing to do with it. He has his own thoughts. I just got off the phone talking about it with him a few minutes ago.'
Was she able to bring him round? 'No. He still feels that way. He has his own mind. He's entitled to his opinion.'
Are all the other siblings behind it? 'Yes. Three of them are performing and my daughter La Toya will be there. But just because some of the family don't feel the same it doesn't mean the family is divided.'
The family divided is a well-trodden path that Katherine Jackson is weary of. I have heard from several sources that Jermaine seems to be acting out the role of the new Joe Jackson, their disciplinarian father who used to beat them if they didn't work hard enough in rehearsals. Sources say that it is usually Jermaine and Randy on one side and Jackie, Tito, Marlon and La Toya on another, and Janet one step removed. Katherine disputes this.
'When we all get together we get on well. I don't know how this started but it got all over the world that we don't get along. That's the biggest lie that's ever been told. I'm so tired of people believing things like that. Every family has their problems. It doesn't mean we never get along. Every person is their own individual person. They can agree on something today and tomorrow they might change their mind, but they might be strong enough to just hold on. That's the way it is.'
Are you saying that if you don't agree with somebody it doesn't mean you don't love them? 'Thank you. That's exactly what I'm saying.'
'My kids are grown now. I always tell them this is your brother, this is your family. If you don't agree with them and something happened to them you would not pass your family by. You would always give a helping hand. That's family. They may fight and have their differences and I'm not saying this is about my family, but this is family period. They may not speak for a while - and this never happened in my family - but if somebody got sick or needed a helping hand I would always be there. Family is always there. You may not agree with everything people in your family are saying. You can't change a person but that doesn't mean you don't love them.'


She becomes a little less afraid. But you sense in her a woman that has endured pain, betrayal, loss. You feel that she might be frail and snap at any minute. Yet at the same time she has endured and will continue. Those around her say that she is indeed the driving force of the family and that nothing happens if she doesn't want it to.
She is the guardian of Michael's children. He wanted that. You can't help wondering if she has the stamina to bring up two teenagers and a ten-year-old. I'm impressed she knows who JLS are, but isn't it all very demanding? 'No, not at all. I have a lot of people helping. They're good kids and I don't have that much to worry about.'
What sort of things do they like doing? 'They have their friends over. They ride their bikes.' It's almost more strange that she makes them seem normal. Their upbringing even before the tragedy was at the very least eccentric. Remember they went out dressed in Spider Man masks and Prince in a surgical mask. Yet they sound very well adjusted.
'They go to acting school and they love that, although Paris doesn't need lessons,' Katherine chuckles, meaning she is a natural actress.
What makes Katherine happy now? 'That's not an easy question. I believe in the resurrection and I'm happy when Paris and Prince come home from school happy. Prince is a very good student. He's always saying 'Grandma I got a 98 in my test. It makes me happy to see them smile.'
Does she see Michael in them? 'Yes, I do,' she says sounding distinct and sombre. 'They are all going to be like him, especially Paris. She has pictures of him hanging all over her wall. When I had a decorator come in who moved them she brought them all out. "I want daddy hanging on the walls". I don't know how she could do it but she does.
'She took a pillow and one of his jackets. She said, "I don't want a jacket that's been cleaned. I want a jacket with his scent on it". She put the jacket over the pillow and she breathes it. It's still there. That's how she is. She said, "I don't ever want it cleaned. He's worn it and it smells of him and I don't ever want the smell to go away".' More weeping.
'They're doing OK. It's been OK,' she says nodding solemnly. 'I'm doing OK. It's hard being a mother and losing your child. It's the hardest thing. It shouldn't be that way round. There's not a day goes by that I don't…' her whispers turn into tears.
'People tell me all the time that I'm strong, but I don't think so. Paris, Prince and Blanket they do suffer in different ways. Prince tried to be stronger than the others. He wants to be a man. He doesn't want people to see what's inside. During the funeral when the kids were handed the crown and they put it on top of the casket,' she cries again. 'He just put his hand on my shoulder and started to cry. He wanted to be strong because he was around all his cousins. From the moment they came from the hospital they were all having a fit… they were all bawling their eyes out.'
She composes herself slightly. 'He was a very good son. There was so much misunderstanding about him because the world tried to poison people against him. All this molestation stuff was just a lie, Oprah Winfrey says if a child tells you something, believe it. It's just the opposite! That first boy came out and admitted it. When it first happened it was all over the world. Then when he admitted he lied because the father made him and the father wanted the money it was so small nobody read it.'
She is still outraged about this. But the outrage is overwhelmed by her sense of loss. She recalls in detail what happened the day she got the news that something was wrong with Michael.
'I got a call to come to the hospital. They said Michael's in the hospital. We rushed down there and when we got there we said where is he and they took me to another room. They wanted to sit down and talk to me, and that's when I was told. I said 'How is he?' They told me he didn't make it. But all I could say was 'How is he?' I think when your child has died there is nothing to take that pain away. But the concert can make me feel good that people all over the world can love him even after his death. He's been given awards after his death and it made me feel good to know that all that bad press perhaps people didn't believe it after all. I know he didn't do it. People say things. They are mixed up. They don't know. These people who did it they know who they are. They know what they did.' She's resolutely silent and not going to tell me who the people are.
She seems to be saying that there was a conspiracy to murder her son, and in this thinking the family are not at war. Jermaine in his book You Are Not Alone: Michael Through A Brother's Eyes is very graphic revealing details such as Michael's chimp wore clothes and Poison perfume by Christian Dior. The book paints him in all his weirdness, but it exonerates him from any crime. The family all do toe one united line, which is that dark forces claimed Michael. Not those within him, but something or someone beyond his reach. Even this fractured and broken family can agree Michael was a victim although nobody is sure exactly of what.
La Toya Jackson has spent the last two years making a documentary and it is alleged that in it she will reveal who exactly she thinks is responsible for his alleged murder.
Did Michael ever talk about if anything happened to him how he wanted her to look after the children? 'No. He never talked about that but he always felt that someone was after him, trying to kill him. He always felt that. Lisa Marie said that she told that to him when she was married to him. That they were trying to put him in jail for something he hadn't done to get him out of the way. He would say to me "Why are they after me? I haven't done anything. What are they accusing me of?"'
It sounds like he was in a panic. I don't want to say it sounds like he was paranoid in front of her in case I make her cry again. 'No,' she says, very resolute. 'I don't think he was panicking. He would say it just like that if he were here with us today. He felt something was going to happen. He was closer to people. He had meetings with them and he knew their personalities, but I can't say any more.'
Katherine has already seen the film of Beyoncé's performance, which had to be worked out in advance because she couldn't perform the routine with the increasing baby bump. I heard that she was dressed as Michael. 'She wears a Michael wig. She's not dressed like Michael, so she doesn't look like him. But she sang one of his songs and spent 12 hours recording it because she wanted to express how much she loved him.' The first of many bouts of tears.
'Every time I think that people did care about my son…,' more weeping, She can't finish the sentence. What is she hoping that the global concert will bring to people? 'I treasure this tribute knowing that these people wouldn't be volunteering if they didn't care about my son. I think JLS were inspired by him. It makes me feel really good that these people are coming together. If he were alive he'd be proud to see that a lot of people were giving back. He loved people, especially children. It is so emotional because he really loved everyone and he's not here to see it. I'm sure he'll be nearby.'
Does she think that she can feel him around her and communicate with him and his spirit? She shakes her head. 'Michael is sleeping now and I know he's not conscious of anything.' She says this as a measure of ultimate sadness and relief.
Katherine Jackson says that her favourite Michael Jackson song was Man In The Mirror and she is looking forward to it being performed at the global tribute concert which she is attending. She doesn't like to fly. Outside her house there is a giant brown and orange trailer in the driveway. It looks like a tour bus. She and the children recently did a long road trip in it. She likes the trailer.
Will the profits from the concert go to Michael's children? 'No. Michael's favourite charities. Mostly he liked giving to children. Wherever he was he would visit orphans and hospitals and babies and children in need. He would always give. Since he was that high.' She gestures to knee level. 'He would look at the kids on TV. The African kids with big bellies and flies all over them and he would cry and he would say I'm going to help them one day. He would always say that.'
I had heard that the concert was to directly benefit Michael's children because the Michael Jackson estate had planned to hold on to the millions in trust till the children were 40. Although when Jackson died there were substantial debts, the subsequent posthumous sales of albums and DVDs are said to have generated £196 million.
On the day we meet there is a news story that suggested the trust had revised their policy and were to give $30 million to Katherine and the children and to some charities.
'I don't know where you've heard that.' It was all over the papers, television and Internet. 'The only thing I'm going to say is they are unfair.' Perhaps she means the estate is unfair because it's a trust and the children will not be awarded that money straight away. Allegedly the trustees do better out of managing a trust the larger the sum of money in it.
She continues, 'A lot of lies came out this morning. They say they're selling Hayvenhurst (the Michael Jackson estate that he grew up in). That's not true. I haven't agreed to that. I don't want it sold and they're not selling it. It's being remodelled.' Will she go back there? 'No, I'm staying here. I like it. It's very light and pleasant here. The other house I lived in for 40 years. Michael grew up in it since he was 11.'
Does she have too many memories? 'I like this one because it's lighter, brighter. Hayvenhurst is an English Tudor. Michael remodelled it as a gift to me. I love it and I don't want to get rid of it.' Does it hold happy memories? 'Yes it does. The most happy time for me and my family was when everybody was at home, nobody was married, my kids were young and they could go out and play and come back and be excited to tell me what happened. That was before they were signed to any record companies. They were just in talent shows. And we were all there sitting around the table eating and talking and having fun.
'I used to cook mostly soul food. In the wintertime we would buy a quarter of a beef and put it in the freezer and I would freeze peaches so we would have steaks and gravy and rice and peach cobbler. We would always have a dessert. Maybe fried apple turnovers. I don't make those now. Those were my happy days. But they will come again.
'I am a spiritual person and I feel I will see my son again at the resurrection.' What else used to make you unhappy, before this devastation? 'I can't think of anything. I try to be strong.'
It certainly must have taken strength to stay with her husband of over 60 years, Joe Jackson. Her children have spoken about their father's brutality. Michael in particular felt tortured by it. He lost his childhood and became a perpetual child. His mother watched all this.
This is not a woman without intelligence and drive. but it's hard to grasp how this all feeling empathic matriarch stood by as her husband Joe regularly beat his children if they didn't get their songs right in rehearsal.
There are also rumours that Joe Jackson cheated on his wife. Does she still love him? 'Well yes, I do. That's a strange question.' Not really. I want to say to her not many women would. But instead I ask does she get on with him? 'Oh yes.'
Here I see parallels with Michael, to want to believe the good in people, that the world can be beautiful when it most definitely isn't. Does that make her naïve or strong?
'I've kept things, but I don't have his pictures out all the time. I'm never going to forget him. Every time I see something of his it just makes me feel bad.'
His stage clothes were auctioned but his personal clothes were not. 'I've just got some little things of Michael's.' She shakes her head as if she is both cherishing and tortured by the memories.

* Artists performing live at the Michael Forever - The Tribute Concert at the Millennium Stadium, Cardiff on October 8 include Leona Lewis, Christina Aguilera, Cee Lo Green, Smokey Robinson, Pixie Lott. For tickets go to michaelforevertribute.com.

When I heard that Hugh Jackman's new movie Real Steel was about giant robots who box to the death I was worried I would hate it. It turns out to be an unexpected delight.
Instead of being dull macho, techno, Jackman's screen charisma manages to fill it with heart, warmth. It's more about a father son rebuilding their dislocated relationship through the experience of rebuilding a robot.
Of course Jackman can give steel warmth. He can give singing and dancing on Broadway machismo. And at his most testosterone fuelled as Wolverine in X-Men, he can give raw vulnerability. He is made up of conflicting extremes.
We meet in a creamy coloured hotel suite in Beverly Hills. He is wearing black T-shirt, dark jeans. He looks lean and chiselled despite the fact he's just put down 12 ounces of filet mignon and steamed green beans. His fifth meal of the day at 4pm. He's beefing up again to return to Wolverine. His shape shifts as fast as his psyche. He has three wardrobes: "thin suits, Hugh suits, and fat suits."
He doesn't take himself seriously at all. He's a joy to interview because he seems to enjoy full disclosure and has not an ounce of self-consciousness. "For a year and a half people have been saying to me, 'What are you doing? A robot boxing movie?'" He turns his nose up in an expression that says he understands. It sounded strange.
If Robocop was meant to be a metaphor for Christ's redemption, Real Steel is about the Holy Trinity - father, son and holy ghost. "It's three disregarded things all coming together. A tale of redemption. My character gets a second chance but sometimes that second chance is more frightening than the first because you know what to expect."
Does he mean he's more comfortable with pain than with trying to succeed? "Exactly. That's what fascinated me about Charlie (his character), and that's what happens to all of us. We repeat behaviour and start blaming everything outside ourselves for why things are going this way. It's much easier dealing with disappointment."
Does he think he's ever done that? "Yeh. In some ways we're all like that." He searches unprompted for an example. "This is the first thing that comes to mind. I've been asked a couple of times to sing and I get quite nervous. And it took me a while before I'd go to get help and take singing lessons. I was singing and getting away with it but I wasn't enjoying it, and I knew if I got singing lessons I'd be able to work through it but I was scared to get help. It was weird. I knew how to deal with it. I'd go in there, get scared, get over it and forget about it. About two years ago I made the choice to get lessons."
Wait a minute. He'd already wowed Broadway with Oklahoma, won a Tony Award for portraying gay singer song write Peter Allen in The Boy From Oz. And in 2009 he presented and sang at the most well-loved Oscar ceremony of the decade. And then he gets singing lessons?
"Yeh. I had to relearn the wheel a bit. I had had a few lessons but nothing sustained. I used to get really nervous going to my singing lessons. I knew it was going to be hard work and I sang every day for a long time and it's been really rewarding."
He's currently about to start a new run of his one-man show. He just finished a run in San Francisco and Toronto. He sings, dances, "and tell stories. I do a lot of improvisation. A very good mate of mine, Jon Macks, he writes for Jay Leno and helped me with the Oscars, helped me by giving me jokes here and there, making me funnier than I really am, but apart from that it's my show and it had to come from me."
What inspired him to do a one-man show? You'd think he had enough to do between Real Steel and The Wolverine. "I thought it'd be great fun and I loved doing it. I wanted to have a vehicle where I enjoyed what I was doing and I have a fear that if you're not singing and dancing and being on stage you lose the muscles for it. I've seen that happen to people. It's a difficult thing if all of a sudden you just lose it.
"I kept being asked 'Will you sing for this charity?'. And I would think I don't have the material. I've been in some musicals, yes…" He didn't feel that his repertoire, impressive as it is, was enough.
"I have to work this out, and then I saw Sting. I went to his concert in Detroit and he told me, 'You could do this'. And I thought well, maybe."
He's friends with Sting. I wonder if they have competitive yogathons when they get together. "No. I'd lose badly. He hasn't tried to get me to do yoga. I did yoga for a film, (Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain). I did two hours of it a day and got burnt out. I didn't get hooked on it like Sting did. In general I like doing different things, as you can see in my acting." Indeed. Extreme variation is his calling card.
"I'm glad that Wolverine was the first big thing I got because if you get known for anything else it's hard to get away from it, so now I have to check against stereotype.
"I started off doing straight acting, more theatre. My dream was to be in the (English) National Theatre. I have a photo of me outside of it with my hands together saying 'One day'. I was visiting my mum who is in England. Most of my family is." More of that later.
"Hollywood wasn't on my radar and I can't remember why the musical thing happened. Maybe because Australia is a little different to England. You just take it as it comes. In Australia you have to go to extremes to make a living. Russell Crowe was in musicals before movies. You just do everything. I'm glad. I was on a show called In Fashion. A cable show. I didn't know anything about fashion but I co-hosted the show. I was myself. I'd go 'Manolo who?' I was offered Neighbours. I got the part when I was auditioning for drama school. And when I got the offer to go to drama school I decided to do that. I ate two minute noodles for my whole first year. I'd turn on Neighbours and I'd see this guy playing the trumpet who was also a lawyer and I'm going I know exactly how this guy has made. Maybe I made a mistake.
"My little sister who is in England was 12 or 13 at the time (1992) was very excited because it was very big in England. She told everyone her brother was going to be in Neighbours and shot to star status. I forgot to tell her that I wasn't going to be in it. She said 'no one believed me for a year.' And I said you wait. And now this. She was going to kill me."
His parents were English but emigrated to Australia in the sixties. They were known as £10 Poms. The cost of the boat ride. "There was a repatriation drive. They wanted white English speaking educated people from England and Canada. After World War II all the immigrants came from southern Europe because we had a labour shortage and the Aussies freaked out that we lost white Australia. My dad was perfect. He'd been to Cambridge, was an accountant, no criminal record and three kids. It was red carpet city. They rolled it out. your whole family for £10."

It would have stayed rosy red carpet had his mother not found it crippling to be away from her family in England. She left to return to the UK when Jackman was eight. "I saw her every year. She would come over. It would be like a family holiday. I remember going to the beach. There was a chance of a reconciliation at that point but she didn't come back for good."
That must have been difficult. "Yeh. It was difficult for everyone really," he says with a mix of pain and understanding in his voice. "Difficult for my dad, my mum, her mum who was not well…
"Obviously my mum and I have made our peace and she wishes she had done things differently, but that's the way things panned out. I never felt she didn't love me or anything."
But he must have felt her loss. It's a lot of miles and a huge time difference. He couldn't just call her when he felt you needed his mum. "That's right. So you get used to the on off nature of it."
Did that mean it affected his relationships with women? The prototype was on off, together then distant? He nods sagely. "I am very comfortable with distance. I can make friends easily and at the end of the movie I see people struggling because they have to say goodbye and they have become close. I don't have a problem with that. I get very close, become good friends, have a good time… and then they go and that's OK. I'll just enjoy you when I see you because there's no control. Maybe that's what attracted me to the showbiz world."
Does that mean he found it difficult to form long-term relationships? "Well a little bit. But I fall in love very easily. I used to fall in love very easily and then I could be away from them and not miss it."
That must have been confusing for his girlfriends. "Yeh, it was. I think a lot of that cured for me when I met Deb." He met Deborra-Lee Furness, an actress and director eight years his senior on the set of Corelli, an Australian TV series that they both appeared in. They were married in 1996.
"That was the first time I felt full love, full understanding of each other. I am completely myself with her and she knows everything about me and vice versa. We have each other's backs. Everyone that meets her says 'Oh forget about you. Your wife is awesome'. And she is. She's a lioness."
He says this grinning with palpable pride. And it's good to see a man who enjoys a woman's strength. Did he feel intensely when he first met her? "Totally. We both did. She was the star of the series when I started first working. I realised I had a crush on her. I couldn't talk to her for a week, I was embarrassed. My first job, she's the leading lady. I thought she's going to think I'm an idiot. But we got on well. I knew we'd be friends for life. I didn't admit that I was falling madly in love with her."
He got an inkling that his feelings might be returned when she and a few friends were having supper at Jackman's house and she got a call from one of her friends to say they were with Mick Jagger and Jagger wanted her to meet him. She said that she was having dinner with Jackman. "And I thought wow, this woman's a keeper. That was the beginning of our relationship that night. If she's going to give up meeting Mick Jagger I had to give it a shot."
They try to protect their relationship from the strain of separation and the fear of what can happen on a movie set. They have a two week rule. "When I first met Debs she'd done 20 movies. She knew that it can become a habit of spending a lot of time apart. You get used to being apart and I never want to be apart from her. Especially when we were lovers. We were madly in love. For two months we were friends and just loved hanging out together. To this day there's no one else I'd rather hang out with. Once we admitted we were in love we had to make it work. There have been times when it has been difficult. Someone had to give up something to go here or there and with kids it gets complicated, but we have not been apart for more than two weeks."
They have homes in Australia and an apartment in New York. "I'm a pack horse, you can put me anywhere, but Deb, New York is her speed. She was misplaced at birth. She's a New Yorker. The kids love Australia, but they love their schools in New York too. I used to go swimming with my son before he went to school. We'd go to the ocean for an hour. It's pretty tough to beat that. My son (Oscar) is 11 and daughter (Ava) 6. For a while we pulled them out of school three months at a time, but now that's too difficult. So now I just have to go back to Broadway," he beams. In fact he's constantly upbeat.
He'll be going back to Broadway in spirit when he starts shooting Les Mis, the movie that Tom Hooper (King's Speech) will direct in the UK next year. "I love the musical. That's a dream of mine."
He will return to actual Broadway to perform Houdini written by Aaron Sorkin, but next up it's Wolverine shot in Japan this October. "I'll have to take with me my box of fat suits. I'm naturally quite lean."
I tell him that I have read about the punishing diet, no carbs after lunchtime and waking up at 4am for egg whites. He nods solemnly. If you google Hugh Jackman the first six things that come up are variations of the Hugh Jackman diet.
Does he care about what people think of him? "Yes. Less than I used to. But yeh, it's there. it would be nice to be completely free of that but I'm not. I don't like disappointing people. I'm not great at saying no either."
Is that why he has three ranges of wardrobe? He doesn't like to say no to the part and has to make himself fit it. "An occupational hazard." He's lost his wedding ring three times because it slips off his finger when he loses weight. "I'm not in the habit of putting it on now. I wear it only for special occasions because it would slip off."
For Real Steel he plays a former boxer. He was lean with a few rippling boxing muscles. "I didn't want to be completely ripped but you've got to believe he was a boxer. Funnily enough I'd been boxing for a year, then this came along."
He seems very seamless as his character Charlie, a man who weathers disappointment with stubbornness and for whom showing emotion is not easy, but all the more heartfelt. Does he share characteristics? "No. I'm way more boring than Charlie. He is all or nothing and I'm more moderate. I used to have more of a temper."
How has he calmed that? "Probably because of meditation. When I was younger kids were afraid of me. I used to go a bit feral. If I got kicked I turned into the Tasmanian devil." So Wolverine was always in there? "As a teenager yes. That's how I got my angst out."
It must have been very difficult for his father looking after five children - three boys, two girls. "It was Herculean. When I saw my dad with his office overlooking Sydney Harbour and a kitchen where he could eat as many chocolate biscuits as he wanted I thought my dad must be really important. He was an accountant although he now says that he doesn't think he could be an accountant now. In his day he was in charge of doing advertising and marketing for the company. Now it is more streamlined."
His father must have given him the impression that it was quite creative because growing up he wanted to be an accountant like his dad. "Acting hadn't crossed my mind, but the first time my brother and I went overseas on a plane they served us this little tray of food and we were like that's it, we were going to be chefs on a plane. So for five years that's what we thought we were going to do. When I get on Qantas they say Neil Perry makes the food. He is a friend and his restaurant is my favourite, but I'm sure Neil's not up there flipping the chicken.
"My parents were both converted by Billy Graham after they got married. They became part of the Billy Graham crusade. I was brought up in a religious household and a couple of times we would go to these events I remember these big tents and people were asked to accept Christ in their lives. I had a strong feeling that I was going to be on the stage. I thought I was going to be doing that because it was very entertaining, so there was a sixth sense about that."
He is friends with Rupert Murdoch. "I am. It's a very difficult time for him. I've sent him my condolences and I haven't heard back. He's a very generous caring family man and I know him on a personal level and we have business together. I know him through family and I'm the godfather of his daughter. He's a very honest man. It must be difficult for him on every level. He's passionate about what he does."
His other surprising friends? "Singer songwriter Richard Marx. He's one of my best friends. We met when I was thinking about doing a CD and we connected immediately. I met Sting through Trudie who came to see me in Oklahoma and invited us to go to her dinner party. Everyone went round the table and said something and when it came to me she said 'you're going to sing'. I thought I'm not going to sing in front of Sting but I sang Beautiful Morning and then Sting sang a cappella Rogers and Hammerstein too. It was at Harry's Bar. It was one of the greatest memories. Sting was brilliant."
Next up he is doing a drinks business based on the model of Newman's Own, a well run charitable venture. It's called Laughing Man coffee and tea. "Another one of my surprising friends is Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus from Bangladesh. He started the whole microcredit phenomenon. I read Paul Newman's book Shameless Exploitation and the Pursuit of Human Good. It's social entrepreneurship where investors get a return and all the profits go to charity. That's what inspired me. The tag line for the company is We Make Money Then Give It Away." They have three blends: house, espresso and decaf, hot chocolate and some herbal teas. "It's called Laughing Man because the one unifying language we have is laughter and laughter can come only with freedom. Poverty keeps people in prison. So we're trying to create a company with an ethos we can all be free, we can all laugh."
It will go online and into supermarkets. "The coffee we sourced from a plantation where I met the farmer. His name is Ducali, so we have a blend called Ducali's Dreams. Qantas will be getting a letter soon to see if they will stock it. I love Qantas. When I grew up my dad always took the cheaper version called Garuda. Australia to London in seven stops. It was the international milk run and took 37 hours. Qantas always felt like luxury. They've got a great service record and nice food but back then Garuda was $500 cheaper."
What makes him happy? "Being with my family. The trick of life is measure and it takes many years to work that out. People think if I win the lottery I'll never work again. Then you won't be happy. We all need work. We all need to contribute. But we don't want to work too much. I'm happiest on stage. The stage routine is an intense period of work. There's pressure but there's time to take the kids to school and pick them up."
He has an amazing relationship with his on screen son. "Imagine it was three months of shooting and not one minute did Dakota do something to annoy me. There isn't a day when my kids don't annoy me in some little way," he laughs.
Does his own son fancy acting? "When my son was seven I was doing the movie Australia and he said why can't I be in the film. Just a few days. I caved. I got him in one extras scene. He was one of the mission boys. He had to walk along, go downstairs and get on a boat. He did this for four days and then he said, 'Dad, your job is the most boring in the world. I never want to do it again.' I think he wants to be a musician. He came on stage and performed the didgeridoo the other night. I was really proud of him. My daughter wants to be a rock star and a chef. She's just like my wife, runs the house. I don't think we'll have any more. After Oscar was born it took us five years to get around to the next one." They adopted their children after Deborra had two miscarriages.
Do they think they want more? "On the plane coming here we heard a baby cry and looked at each other, 'Thank God it's not ours'. We adopted in America. We couldn't adopt in Australia. It's unbelievably backward and the rule is you have to stay in one place for two years. If you work in other cities it means your family is not a priority." He shakes his head.
"The other thing about adopting locally is that Australia has a progressive welfare safety net, so there are really not many adoptions any more. I think last year there were four in Victoria, maybe 100 nationally, because there's good care and opportunities for single mums."
It's obviously something he's looked into a lot. "I was really ready to have kids. I was excited. I was 30. I'd had a good run."
Does he do his own stunts? "I used to be afraid of heights when I was younger. I would climb every day to the top of the diving board till I got over it. When you've got older brothers and you're in Australia everything's about climbing and jumping, so I don't have fears except for my kids, what's going to happen to them. All the things I can't control. I'm doing this parenting thing for the first time, I'm sure I'm screwing up. I'll never know till later, right?"
He asks the question waiting for an answer. I tell him I think he's doing absolutely right.

I am waiting for Jessica Alba in her cutesy cottage-style office in Los Angeles. Her company makes eco-friendly baby paraphernalia, which fits in with her image of über earth mother.
I hear the screams of what terms out to be Honor, her three-year-old IMPLORING 'Mummy, don't leave me, don't leave me.' Alba is unfazed.
She is on so many lists as the world's most beautiful, the world's most sexy. One girl even had surgery to look like her so her boyfriend wouldn't end the relationship.
Giant hazelnut eyes, an open unblemished face, lustrous healthy hair scooped back, her lips are naturally the size of pillows. She is wearing Givenchy strappy sandals, golden skin, and black dress that reveals her neat perfect baby bump. As we speak she is eight and a bit months pregnant.
I comment on how she manages to look gorgeous at such a time. She looks at me warily. Most interviews end up being about her body. It irks her. In fact an American glossy magazine recently featured her on the cover bemoaning that she would never get her pre-baby body back. "It sounds like I brought it up like that. Id didn't. In fact I'm much happier with my body than I've ever been. It's different, but it's fine. I had a different association with my body and what perfection was when I was younger. And now that I've had my daughter and this next one (she won't say if it's a boy or girl) it's like we're built to have babies, and that's cool.
"My body's different and I'm different mentally. I'm owning it. I don't know why people think it's bad that my body's not the same as it was before. I don't want it to be the same."
Her pre-baby body was a feature that catapulted her to fame in Sin City and bikini clad in Into The Blue. She worked on a prodigious number of movies over the last decade. Not all of them good. And was voted a Razzie award for worst actress in 2007 for her performances that year in Awake, Good Luck Chuck, and Fantastic Four.
Talking to her for a couple of hours makes me realise how unfazed she would have been by that. She cares very little for what other people think of her and has this extraordinary ability to live in her own world of focus, determination and mantra.
She confirms she does not want her pre-baby back. "I don't care to be 105lbs. I was tiny. I'm 5'7". I never said I wanted that body back."
Wait a minute. 105lbs That's verging on the skeletal. Why was that? Softly: "I was working a lot. They would say you have 15minutes to eat and I would graze. A 30 minute break for lunch meant 15 minutes of touch-ups. When do you have time to eat? I was stressed. I don't like to eat when I'm stressed."
Did she feel pressured to stay that size? "I wasn't worried about being one way or another. I prefer not being super stressed out. I was still not the smallest girl. There are still actresses that are smaller than me. I was considered kind of big. The camera puts 10 to 15lbs on you. So if you are 130lbs and 5'7", on screen you will seem like a bigger girl. You can obsess about that. It's not going to make you a better actress."
How did she lose her baby weight? "It took a long time, about a year. I tried not to eat processed foods. It wasn't until I got a job that I needed to work out for that the last 20lbs came off. It was horrible. I don't recommend it. It was a money job, an endorsement. You have to make a living. I feel better about doing jobs knowing that I will hopefully have the opportunity to do more stuff that's creative and fulfilling."
Becoming a mother though has changed her focus entirely about what roles she does. She plays a mum who is also a spy in Spy Kids 4 and manages to make it relevant to her.
"My priorities and how I approach the business has quite changed. Before I was about doing as much as humanly possible and basically not turning down a whole lot. I was hustling. Now it's about: Do I love this character? Is it a great script? Who is the film maker? Am I going to grow and learn?"
And before? "I was about Will this keep me globally relevant? My first job was when Honor was four months old, so it was an adjustment. We all go through struggles, is it worth it? How much time am I going to spend away? How do I maintain and hold on to my own identity? My character in Spy Kids gives up work to be a full-time mum. She's not great at it until she embraces work again."
She's a very serious and worthy mum. Didn't she want to just make that her identity? "No. I think the thirties (she's recently turned 30) are going to be good for parts for women, and the forties and fifties. There aren't many roles for women in their twenties that are complicated and dynamic. I feel you can get into meatier stuff when you are going through big monumental life changes."
She certainly doesn't worry about not being the token babe. "I honestly never think about my looks unless I'm being interviewed and have to talk about it." I believe her. For a start she has nothing to worry about. And there's something about her which seems very much in her own world.
Her father, who is second generation Mexican American and spoke no Spanish, was in the Air Force. They moved bases every couple of years until he left to go into real estate.
"Being uprooted was difficult. I was isolated when I was a kid. I didn't have many friends. All the moving around meant I was close to my family. I also had asthma, kidney and appendix problems. I was with adults a lot."
Did she want to stand out or blend in? "I didn't care. I was a bit of a narcissist. I didn't seek attention, but I also didn't care to be a follower. I was indifferent to the social pressures of my peer group."
She started acting as a child, but her first role was in James Cameron's TV series Dark Angel. I get the idea that she is not a woman who is used to being said no to. She wouldn't allow it. "I think women can have it all. But there's a pressure. You are not just bringing home the bacon, you're cooking it, looking after your kids, having sex with your husband, and trying to kick ass at your job. I haven't given up anything, I've just cut myself some slack. I'm not going to be the best at everything."
I imagine that was quite hard for her to do. She grew up Catholic but became a born again Christian when she was 12. "I did that until I was 16 but I didn't believe in the core philosophies they were teaching in church. I had friends that were gay and had friends that had sex before they were married and I didn't think they were going to hell. I do believe in God."
Does she think we've been here before? "I'm not closed to that possibility. I definitely felt like I knew my husband when I met him."
Her husband is Cash Warren, son of Michael Warren, Hill Street Blues actor. They met while making Fantastic Four in 2004 where he was working in production. They married in 2008. It was an instant comfort when I met him. I felt like we were family. I wasn't thinking of him romantically at first. It was just like I knew him my whole life."
So you were friends first? "Yes, but only for ten days. we were both dating someone else. So we just hung out at first. And then we started hanging out differently." She smiles and it's a proper warm smile.
"I have a fondness for Vancouver because we lived in a bubble there before our friends and our families came back into our life. It's nice to meet someone on location, bring them into your life. He had his thing, I had mine. It was maybe it'll work, maybe it won't, we'll see."
Was she ready to start a family? "No, it just happened and we were like OK, let's do this. You go through the most profound things that human beings can experience. It's made our bond deeper. It's creating a life that you created with someone else that makes everything more solid. He is super involved."
She arches back a little in her stiff chair. She thinks she could give birth any time. She's very anti C-section. "I'm having a baby. There's no emergency. There are times when it was painful, for sure. But women have been giving birth since the beginning of time, so why all of a sudden do we need medical intervention? It makes a doctor's life easy and benefits the insurance companies. More money and the anaesthetists benefit. A natural birth takes a lot more time. When it's a scheduled C they know exactly how long it will take. Labour is unpredictable."
She has a tattoo on her wrist of some writing in Sanskrit. "It says padma, which means lotus - the manifestation of spiritual beauty." How interesting that someone so physically beautiful would be all about spiritual beauty. What's up for her next.
"I love my work, but it's not my be all and end all. I'm working with writers on a couple of projects I'm trying to develop. One of them is a TV script. I'm looking forward to the next phase. I haven't done any action movies and I'm one of the few women that can really do my own stunts."
So having babies hasn't made her cautious? Isn't she a little afraid? "I was trained and I really enjoyed it." Is she afraid of anything? "Psychos, sharks, hippopotamuses, crocodiles, not being a good parent… but I try not to harp on about things that don't serve me."

Louis Walsh is walking towards me across a quiet restaurant in a Dublin Hotel. Nothing about him looks like Louis Walsh. There's no naughty twinkle, no smile.
There's a greyness to his skin that comes when people haven't slept for weeks. He looks like a ghost of Louis Walsh, and at least two stone thinner.
We sit down and he confirms that it's true. "None of my clothes fit me, and I didn't get to sleep till around 3.30am and I'd taken a sleeping pill."
All this is a result of him being falsely accused by a 24-year-old man of sexual assault in a Dublin nightclub at the end of June. The man has since been arrested and charged with making false accusations, but not before Louis Walsh's name was on the front page of The Sun and on Sky News and all over the world linked to this heinous offence.
"It's had the worst effect of anything in my life. I haven't got over it. I have flashbacks in the middle of the night thinking about what could have happened if the police hadn't cleared me in a few days. The Sun called me and told me that they had this front page story on me even though I'd told them it was all untrue.
"Somebody I don't even know and I'm front page news and it's picked up all over the world. I could have lost my job. I could have lost everything. All I have is my name. It's all I've ever worked for.
"The police sorted it out within three days but the whole thing has made me so wary of everybody and everything. I haven't been to any gigs. I didn't go to Oxygen and I didn't see Prince last week, All the things I would have done normally. And I don't ever want to go to a nightclub again. I've developed a fear of nightclubs and people coming up to me."
He stares into his cappuccino not even wanting to eat lunch. This is not the Louis Walsh I know who always is up for going out, having fun. I first met him at a party for Westlife, who he manages, long before he was an X Factor judge. In all those years I've never known him be miserable. He's never had an emotional problem. He's never been sad. To be around him is usually a tonic to pull anyone out of feeling miserable. He's always got something that he's excited about and hilarious tales, most recently of Jedward, the terrible Irish twins that he manages and gave a life after X Factor to. In fact they're the only people in Ireland who are making money. They've just closed a huge deal to be on the new Celebrity Big Brother. It's completely shocking to see him like this.
He was at Dublin Airport sitting in the lounge that day in June when he got a call from a journalist telling him about the story they had. He denied it immediately and got on the plane to Heathrow - he was appearing with his new girl band Wonderland on the Alan Carr Show. On the flight he couldn't stop thinking about it. He called his long time publicist Sara Lee to meet him at the show. He now doesn't remember anything about the Alan Carr show he'd got into such a state.
"That night I had to stay at the Kensington Hotel. I knew I was going to be in the paper the next day and I thought how am I going to do this. This is the end of my life. I'm going to be ruined. I might as well take a whole bottle of pills. I did think that. I swear on my mother's life it was bad.
"Sara Lee was with me so I couldn't let her go. She stayed in the bed with me that night. I was having a panic attack that was the worst thing ever so I couldn't let her go. I don't know what would have happened. I'll never forget it that night, and I'll never want to stay in that hotel room again. I want a front page apology from The Sun. I just want this over and done with. It's the worst thing that's happened to me in my whole life. Nothing could ever be as bad."
I tell him, but you could be gravely ill. Surely that would be worse. "No. I could cope with that. But this has mentally and physically ****** me totally."
He can't talk for legal reasons about several aspects of the story because he is suing the paper that printed it. He has assembled a top legal team. "I was totally innocent of everything yet I was a front page news story that damaged my reputation. I didn't sleep for a whole week. I didn't eat for a week. I didn't watch TV. I couldn't read the papers because I was in the papers every day. I just wanted to hide."
He cancelled going to Elton John's White Tie And Tiara Ball. At Elton's Oscar party in February Louis and I were practically the last ones to leave. We were having a laugh, something which is now completely stripped from his life.
"Elton John rang me the following morning and said that the Sun did a similar thing to him and that I must fight to clear my name and that's what I'm going to do. They cannot make up stories like that. I feel sick all the time. I can't eat and I can't enjoy myself. It makes me question everything I read about people in the papers."
Initially he was worried about what his family and what his 81-year-old mother would make of it. "My mother, my family, everybody was great. Everybody knew it was untrue but still…"
You see the pain in his eyes. Something utterly untrue. His word against a front page story. "Simon (Cowell) was incredibly supportive and Elton. To have someone like him lift up the phone and take the time for me was a really nice thing. Simon was on the phone to me all week, and Sharon (Osbourne) and Dannii (Minogue) and Cheryl (Cole). Now I totally get what Cheryl goes through when you read things in the paper that are not true about yourself. ITV were very keen to know when I would be cleared. Obviously X Factor is a family show and I could have lost my job…
"X Factor, I don't know what I'd do without it." By this he means he probably wouldn't leave the house. Throwing himself into a new regime there of much "tougher" judges has been the only thing that's taken his mind off the trauma. "I'm staying in and watching Nurse Jackie and Dexter and Damages. I don't even go to restaurants any more. It's lucky that I'm doing the X Factor."
Is it hard to adjust to new people? "It's totally different. A different energy. I miss Simon obviously. I miss the banter between us. We were like Laurel and Hardy. But these new judges are good.
"Kelly Rowland is like an athlete. She trains for the whole thing. In the morning she'll train her vocal chords." To be a judge? "Yes. She's a proper singer. She's from a proper band (Destiny's Child) and she likes to train.
"Then we've got Gary Barlow who's written some of my favourite songs. He's probably playing the Simon role more than anybody else. But he's himself. And he too is a singer in one of the biggest bands.
"And then we've got Tulisa from N-Dubz. I sit besides her and I thought she was going to be an absolute nightmare…" Is she your new best friend? "Yes. I feel so at ease talking to her. You don't have to massage her ego. She gets it. I think people are going to be surprised by her.
"I think Dannii and Cheryl will be missed initially because people know them as characters, but then they're going to be surprised. This could be the best X Factor ever. The girls this year are incredible. "
For a moment it's the old Louis, excited. And then he recalls. "One big pop star was at American Idol and had his picture taken with somebody who said they were a fan and turned out to be a big drug dealer. Everyone has a camera phone and can take your picture. When you go out you get your picture taken thousands of times. You're in the middle of people. They're there as if they know me."
Louis has always been very open about that sort of thing. I remember going to a U2 gig with him at Croke Park, Dublin. He must have had his picture taken 50 times in 100 yards and he never thought twice about it.
"That was my number one rule to my bands. Be nice to everybody. You have to be accessible. And now I'm scared. Everybody had my phone number. Now I have a new phone. I thought I could trust everybody. All I wanted to do is work in this business because I love it and have a normal life. The price you pay for being in the public eye is you are public property. I was talking to Cheryl about this. I know exactly what Cheryl felt like. There were photographers outside the hotel, at the airport, outside my house. It was the scariest thing. Up until this I didn't realise the pressure. I've never had a minder with me and now I will not go anywhere without someone. Cheryl invited me to her birthday party. I just couldn't go.
"There was an invitation for her to come back to the UK X Factor but I don't think there would have been the same dynamic if Simon wasn't there. They had a Sonny and Cher thing going on. I think she did the right thing by not coming back. I'd love to see her perform on the show. I only wish her well and if she's happy with Ashley people should leave them alone. She's in the papers every day with every move she makes. I know Ashley and I've seen another side to him and I like him. Everybody thinks he's a bad boy. I think he loves Cheryl and she loves him.
"It's a tough business. Especially for girls because there's always a new girl coming along. It's tough to survive. It's important that she keeps herself happy. It's her life.
"As for Dannii, I think the baby has changed her life an awful lot. When the dates changed it didn't work with her Australian show and I think she likes Australia more than anything. It took me a long time to get to know her, but when I did I thought she was really really great."
For a whole year he was wary of Dannii because he wanted to be loyal who spectacularly fell out with her and quit the show. "I love Sharon. We talk to each other in the middle of the night. She tells me about America's Got Talent and we always have fun."
Fun? Will he be able to have fun again? He sighs. "I've discovered my garden. There are birds and squirrels and foxes. I'm sitting in it a lot."
Maybe when the court case is over, no date has yet been fixed, he'll start to feel better and stop having the flashbacks. He nods hopefully. Before then there's a whole new X Factor to take his mind off it. "Somebody asked me what's the difference between the new panel and the old. On the new panel nobody's had any botox and apart from me they can all sing.
"Bootcamp is starting at 8.30am not noon like when Simon had it. And if Gary, Kelly and Tulisa can do it I'll have to do it, work flat out till midnight. Only strong are going to survive, and that's just the judges." At last there's a naughty laugh."I think Dannii and Cheryl will be missed initially because people know them as characters, but then they're going to be surprised. This could be the best X Factor ever. The girls this year are incredible. "
For a moment it's the old Louis, excited. And then he recalls. "One big pop star was at American Idol and had his picture taken with somebody who said they were a fan and turned out to be a big drug dealer. Everyone has a camera phone and can take your picture. When you go out you get your picture taken thousands of times. You're in the middle of people. They're there as if they know me."
Louis has always been very open about that sort of thing. I remember going to a U2 gig with him at Croke Park, Dublin. He must have had his picture taken 50 times in 100 yards and he never thought twice about it.
"That was my number one rule to my bands. Be nice to everybody. You have to be accessible. And now I'm scared. Everybody had my phone number. Now I have a new phone. I thought I could trust everybody. All I wanted to do is work in this business because I love it and have a normal life. The price you pay for being in the public eye is you are public property. I was talking to Cheryl about this. I know exactly what Cheryl felt like. There were photographers outside the hotel, at the airport, outside my house. It was the scariest thing. Up until this I didn't realise the pressure. I've never had a minder with me and now I will not go anywhere without someone. Cheryl invited me to her birthday party. I just couldn't go.
"There was an invitation for her to come back to the UK X Factor but I don't think there would have been the same dynamic if Simon wasn't there. They had a Sonny and Cher thing going on. I think she did the right thing by not coming back. I'd love to see her perform on the show. I only wish her well and if she's happy with Ashley people should leave them alone. She's in the papers every day with every move she makes. I know Ashley and I've seen another side to him and I like him. Everybody thinks he's a bad boy. I think he loves Cheryl and she loves him.
"It's a tough business. Especially for girls because there's always a new girl coming along. It's tough to survive. It's important that she keeps herself happy. It's her life.
"As for Dannii, I think the baby has changed her life an awful lot. When the dates changed it didn't work with her Australian show and I think she likes Australia more than anything. It took me a long time to get to know her, but when I did I thought she was really really great."
For a whole year he was wary of Dannii because he wanted to be loyal who spectacularly fell out with her and quit the show. "I love Sharon. We talk to each other in the middle of the night. She tells me about America's Got Talent and we always have fun."
Fun? Will he be able to have fun again? He sighs. "I've discovered my garden. There are birds and squirrels and foxes. I'm sitting in it a lot."
Maybe when the court case is over, no date has yet been fixed, he'll start to feel better and stop having the flashbacks. He nods hopefully. Before then there's a whole new X Factor to take his mind off it. "Somebody asked me what's the difference between the new panel and the old. On the new panel nobody's had any botox and apart from me they can all sing.
"Bootcamp is starting at 8.30am not noon like when Simon had it. And if Gary, Kelly and Tulisa can do it I'll have to do it, work flat out till midnight. Only strong are going to survive, and that's just the judges." At last there's a naughty laugh.

Everybody told me that Alison Krauss was a recluse living in Nashville. That she didn't like giving interviews. That she was very closed or super shy. I could only believe this must be true as I'd been trying to interview her for over a decade. I'd always loved her voice, so sweet, so pure, so warm when I first discovered it on Now That I Found You (1995).
That was long before Raising Sand, the album that reinvented Robert Plant and was much applauded all over the world, and that was before she became the woman who has won the most Grammys in the history of the awards (26), only Quincy Jones has won more (31). And after this album Paper Airplane is released I've no doubt she'll break her own record.
The adjective most used to describe her is ethereal, which scared me even more. It made her seem even more untouchable, unreachable. Yet her voice seems filled with the pain of the human heart and she sings about love found and lost, the full emotional spectrum. When she sings about pain and joy you feel included. Hers is the most traditional form of American music, bluegrass. Pain is in its DNA.
We meet in Nashville in her manager's office. I first glimpse her peering round the door. Long blondish bed head hair, smoky eyes, jeans, blue paisley top. She looks extremely pretty and vaguely surprised. I later learn to know the look. Alison is permanently surprised. Surprised as if everything she is discovering for the first time, as if everything she's feeling is fresh and never been felt by anyone else before.
The new album with her band Union Station took a little longer than expected. I thought perhaps it was a little hard to follow something like Raising Sand. But it wasn't anything to do with that. It was more to do with Krauss really not feeling very good and the main songwriter having a terrible writer's block. Krauss's role as an interpreter, a seer and a feeler, is crucial and she couldn't feel anything.
"I'm used to editing things and making them work for us and giving suggestions, but my personal life had just kind of gone… and I was getting headaches all the time, migraines, so I couldn't judge so well. I didn't feel like I could. Nothing felt good to me but I couldn't tell what it felt like. I didn't know what to think. I just thought you know we don't have it yet. Let me go and dig around some more. Eventually I got rid of the headache, but it took months. It was a dull headache that just hung on. One time before I got this kind of headache it lasted for a year and a half. You wait, you scrabble around looking for something. The biggest difference this time was I found an acupuncturist. After all the doctors and all the pills she made the biggest difference."
I tell her that my cure for headache is espresso. She said, 'Oh, I get pretty jacked if I drink coffee.' It seems like Alison is hypersensitive. Everything affects her intensely. She must be feeling pretty relaxed because today she will try some coffee with triple cream and triple sugar.
"I hate to sound like I'm complaining," she says. I don't think she ever likes to complain. She likes to take things on, work things out. And she certainly never likes to boast, for instance about singing for the Obamas in the White House. In fact the headache that lasted such a long time sounds completely terrible.
"You learn a lot about yourself when you have something like that. You realize how much it affects every part of your life. Trying to be in the studio and making really emotional decisions when you're all flat. We didn't scrap everything from those first sessions. It was not like it was terrible. We had some good songs. It was just that nothing was going to sound good."
There's a line in Paper Airplane, 'Every silver lining has its cloud'. Is that the new glass is half empty? Was that your state of mind? "The guy that wrote that is Robert Lee Castleman. He's a fascinating guy. You would go crazy over him." She says that because there's a sense that she already knows me and we've only just started talking.
"He's a former truck driver, but he's done everything - woodworking, collecting old stoves. You spend time with him you feel you've expanded your mind. Anyway, he was having writer's block. He said I've got a beautiful wife, a beautiful daughter, a beautiful son. I used to go to these places to be broken hearted and I just can't feel it any more.' He's always been the centre of our records. So I called him. I was stuck in my mind as well and I said 'We need you. Just come over.' So we just talked. Talked about a story. Talked about things. It was just a seed. I don't want to act like I had anything to do with it. But he'd say, 'OK. Tell me what's going on with you.' And I'd come over and he'd say 'I've got a melody.' And we'd sit and talk for about an hour and a half. I'm all jacked up. I just spilled my guts. And I said 'Well what are we going to do now?' And he said, 'I'm just going to wait. It'll be here by midnight.' And then he called me and said 'I've got it. It's called Paper Airplane.'
It's like he downloaded it from a mystical source. He channeled Krauss's pain, his past pain, and it became a heartbreaking song. "He's a remarkable person. A lot of these guys, when they get married and they don't have that heartbreak, you find there's always this common thread between songwriters. They're striving for the next thing. Like always on a search. And you know men and women are on the eternal chase of each other. So that's a handy thing when you're a creative songwriter. But when that chase has gone… I've seen that a number of times. So that's when I say 'Why don't we talk about these true stories. It might not have happened to you but if it happened to me I'll share them. Maybe you can connect. He goes 'No, it doesn't work that way.' But the first we did it, it worked and it was beautiful and he said 'Maybe I can do that.'"
Do you think artists have to be in pain to write songs or are the songs better when they're tortured? "I think it just has to be true." She talks about one guy called Sydney Cox who she's been friendly with since she was 16. "He always wrote these beautiful songs. I've recorded I don't know how many over the years. He's married and has three daughters and they were all sitting around while he was down here writing. And he said, 'I just can't write these love songs any more. I feel like I am betraying her by writing these songs because it just isn't true any more this heartbreak stuff.' I said to him 'You just have to tell your truth in another way.' He's very into his family's history, so he's working on stuff like that now about a woman who used to write to all the soldiers when they were in town."
I tell her she is the super muse. "No, pah. I'm not the muse. I'm the encourager. A lot of people have told me that people are satisfied playing in their living rooms and I say if you are a musician that's not true, you want to be heard. It's your story even if you are playing someone else's tune. You might be playing it in your living room, but as long as there are people who can't wait to hear what you've got that's an encouragement."
Krauss does this weird thing that she peels layers away from people, gets to the core of who they are. It's as if she can see inside you and her voice is a mixture of everything she sees and everything she's ever felt. Just talking to her you get goose bumps. But the weird thing is she has goose bumps too. She stretches her arm across the table and I stretch mine - matching goose bumps. What does she think of all these people calling her ethereal?
"Well as long as they're not calling you ugly or a loser it's OK. When someone paints it's an expression of themselves. It doesn't come out any other way. It's about being seen or understood." It turns out that she actually does paint in her living room, but more of that later.
She doesn't have a television. Or at least she doesn't watch television at home. Sometimes it gets hooked up when there's a game or occasionally the weather. She contributed to the multi-mion selling soundtrack of the Coen Brothers' O Brother Where Art Thou and has never even seen the movie. But she likes to look up clips on YouTube. "That's my one connection to the world. I've been watching old interviews of Levon Helm. I like to hear what people have to say. He has the kindest, sweetest eyes you've ever seen. You think you know him and maybe you do."
Has success affected her at all? "I never thought I'd be doing this. I wanted to become a choir director when I was a kid because I was in a children's choir and the teacher was great. They would direct so that everyone was singing the same kind of vowel and she'd do all that kind of working to get people to sing together and I loved it. I didn't think I'd be doing this. It's all been a big surprise. One of the guys in the band says this about me. 'You walk around surprised, not about work, or anything in particular, but just in general. A state of surprise.'"
She learnt to play the fiddle at a very young age and had a record deal by the time she was 14. She is still with the same record company 25 years later.
She was brought up in Champaign, Illinois, a rural area three hours south of Chicago, but seems to have lived in Nashville all her working life. She was married to country musician Pat Bergeson, but they divorced in 2001 and she has a son, Sam, 11. She shows me his picture on her phone. He's a handsome boy with huge wise eyes.
Was it any kind of pressure that her last album with Robert Plant was so successful? "No, I don't think of it like that. I don't think about what's coming next. I treat each one like it's the only one you've ever made and the only one you're ever going to make."
Is she good at living in the moment? "Once I get to the moment I'm good but it takes me a long time to get to that moment. I'm a very sentimental person, probably to a fault. And that can bring you down. Workwise I don't think about the future. I think about little people growing up. Worry is really a choice isn't it and I try not to," she says falteringly. "A wasted emotion someone told me. I'd rather do macramé. I like needlepointing.
"We did get some paint and we started painting, my son and I, together. I say you pick the music. He likes Lecon Helm (from The Band). We listen to it and we paint. I have photographs that are in black and white and we paint them in colour. The first one we did was absolutely terrible. The second one was awful. And I'm hoping the third one will just suck." We are chatting happily. Our allotted hour has been and gone several hours ago.
"In the studio where do you draw the line where something is finished? I used to be very much over doing things. And as I've got older I think I don't want to steal from what this is really offering. The real meaning behind the music is emotional. Because it's like you're sharing something and the goal is to be understood. I think if you're focusing too much on the details you miss the experience.
"With painting I'm not listening any more, just experiencing. That's why it's emotional. You know how when you stop paying attention you just kind of receive it. My mother is a painter and she's so amazing. It was like I'm never getting these paints out. she comes over and says 'Where are the paints?' and I'm like 'Absolutely not. When you get your fiddle record done I'll show you my painting.' The paintings are awful anyway so I hide them." Is her son a painter or a fiddler? "He's very musical. He's pretty good but he doesn't want compliments." Does she take compliments well? "Some you can accept and some you can't. if some are too nice you can't accept it because you can't believe it. There's nothing like believing it though," she smiles, "if someone wants to say it and they mean it."
We talk about how we love a song that makes us cry. Sometimes it's the tears not cried that makes it easier to cry at a song, a release. Some people are unable to cry even when a loved one dies. "Everyone mourns in their own way and that's why I think it's the movie or the music that helps that come out later when it's not too big."
In a love relationship is she the one who likes to love more or be loved more? "When you're the one giving it's safer. You know you can't receive back what you give. It's free. When it's costly it's harder to receive that. If you're receiving you're not gambling. You don't have expectations so you can't love as much, but it's harder to receive. It's very human and very female.
"When you look back in your relationships it's when were you most happy. Were you happy when you loved more. You had more to gamble. When you loved the other person more you were at your happiest even though it wasn't necessarily safer."
We discuss if loving more or being loved makes you feel more in touch with who you are. I'm not really sure of what we conclude. It's just a big talk on the nature of love.
Does she have the same relationship over and over again but with a different person? "It's hard to say. I'm still working on the things I need to know. I don't think it's the same person."
She seems very wise, evolved. "I don't think so. People will be like you've seen so much and I'm no, mine was a very sheltered life. We've played bluegrass festivals which is not a huge crazy audience. When you look at what the songs are about it's pretty wholesome ideas. Except every now and then when someone's killing someone."
It might be a narrow background but it's a background from which all extremes of emotion are felt. "Yes, in a way. But we started travelling and I missed out on a lot of normal kind of life in this pretty secluded bunch. I mean I had a great time but I was focused on music at a very young age. It wasn't like we have to get a record deal but it was always on my mind. I think it's a pretty common story but I didn't see a lot. I think I was so naïve that I missed out on a lot of things that were going on right in front of me."
I read that her mother said if you can sing you can play an instrument and she believed that. "Yes, I believed that. My dad loved music but he's not as musical as my mum. He was a psychologist, then moved on to real estate. I have a brother, Viktor, he wrote Lie Awake. He plays for Lyle Lovett. I called him when I heard a tune on the radio and he's written things for us before. I heard this song and I thought I wished we had a song like that for this record. So I asked him, do you think you can write this kind of tune for us?"
Her parents and brother have all moved near to Nashville. They are very close and Viktor is a year and a half older. "Isn't it the four year split that makes rivals. My mother said she never wanted to have that."
We start looking at the photographs of her on the album - she's in a Dustbowl waif cotton lawn dress. "It's a real period dress and you can see through it. The photographer, who's a lady said 'No slip. Absolutely not.' You know it was hot and nasty in the Dustbowl. I would think a lot of them would be thinking I'm not wearing a slip. But this is a sexed up Dustbowl. Some of these pictures I thought oh that's a little bit too crazy. I think lady photographers always want to push it. They love being out there."
Interesting contradiction. Krauss is sweet, nurtury, naïve. It's almost an experiment on herself for her to do this sexed up look but she embraces it fully. The dress is cream with tiny flowers, red and white. "I've always been into those kind of clothes. I don't have vintage. I have modern versions. I have phases of shopping. Sometimes you see lots of stuff you like, other times you don't. I think it depends on how you feel about yourself. When you're on top of your game it's 'I love it.'"
I tell her that I can imagine her in her waif's dresses wafting around in her house. She finishes the sentence "feeling lonely"
and then laughs loudly.
Why doesn't she watch TV? "I used to watch it all the time. I put it by this wall and every time I would sit on the couch I thought why do I feel so terrible right now. Even if the TV wasn't on it just depresses you. I used to have bad dreams after watching crime shows late at night so I felt better without it."
I have to have the TV on to fall asleep. "That's very interesting. It's because you don't like to hear your own thoughts. I can fall asleep quicker if I'm listening to someone else. I used to fall asleep during a drive to the grocery store if my mother was driving. I do better hearing someone else, then I don't have to hear myself."
I read that Robert Plant's sister said finally someone had got Robert to sing properly. "Ha. Yes, we keep in touch. We talk on the phone. He's a lovely person. Really funny." Will there be more songs together? "We talk about it. It comes up almost every time we chat but I don't know when it will be. When he first called my son was an infant and we talked for five minutes and then a few years later he called again and said why don't you come for this tribute for Leadbelly. So we played there and a couple of years after that he was 'Let's go to the studio and see what we can do.' So we said we'd try three or four days and see how it goes and it went really well."
I admire her necklace. It looks like a fairy's necklace. "I don't have a lot of jewellery that I have a connection to, that has meaning. Like if I wear this the crust won't burn on the pie.
She's not exactly shy, but she's introspective and the opposite of showy, yet she's in a profession that demands a lot of attention. "I always felt I had the wrong personality for my job. I do much better one on one. When we first started doing this I was really guarding myself and I think that looked a lot weirder than I was already. And I thought 'No, I'm not going to do that any more. I'm going to be myself as much as I can. And then everything changed for me when I made that decision not to be so protected because then you're portraying a false version of yourself. You get so worried that people are going to have an idea of what you're like just because you're trying to keep to yourself, and then it becomes very strange. They're like 'What's up with her?' I don't have the kind of attention - I have a private normal life - there isn't that kind of attention on us here or on me." Maybe because that's how it is in Nashville. Everyone's a songwriter. "A few times things have got crazy. What I do is not really in a commercial environment."
You get the impression that commercial success has never tainted her. She doesn't have extravagant taste in anything. "You know why I think people like shoes. I think when you step into them and you're standing you can feel like a different person. It's all about how you feel. Some you stand and you're ready to go to work." I feel sure she doesn't have as many pairs of shoes as I do, which is over 300. "No," she says. "But I do like them too."
Is there anything she would like to change about herself? "Oh, that's interesting." (More surprised face). I don't think anyone's ever asked me that. I do wish this process of accepting, you know when you're always striving for something, the greatest change comes when you realise that this is who you are and who you are meant to be and you just kind of stop that wanting to change things. That comes in increments for me and I wish it came more. Sometimes you go through and you have a revelation about things. I welcome that with more ease than I have in the past. I don't think you can ever force it.
"I used to remember how I felt when I was seven or eight, and then suddenly you don't feel a connection to how you used to feel because you've changed so much."
I tell her that I remember exactly how I felt. That I was a strange child and didn't really connect to anything. "And now look at you," she laughs. "Somebody's differences are either celebrated or they're not. There's a reason they stick out. they're charismatic if they don't fit in because they're leaders."
And was she like that? "You know it's funny because there were a couple of things after I had a baby I forgot. I disconnected with those things because it's life changing. I lost those tangible memories of what I didn't feel like and what I did feel like and how I became very introverted. By the time I was in seventh grade I wasn't in a clique. I was friendly with everybody but not tight. And you probably feel very alone as I do, even though you make connections. The people you are tight with are few and far between. Having a baby made me forget. I don't have the tangible memory of it. I knew who I was at seven which I remember that lasted up until the time I had him and I think I've been the same since then. Your whole life switches."
Do she think she'll have another baby? "I'm too old now. If I could have had five I would have. But I've got no complaints. It's such a drag when you realize the opportunity is over."
She's only 39, but she seems to think that's way past it. Her eyes are blue, flecked with yellow and grey. Intense eyes. Yet her company is not intense. She's really easy to be with. But the way she connects is extremely charismatic. Perhaps it's because a lonely person needs to connect to people - maybe that's what makes a great artist.
She started chatting about the barn dance she would be holding the next week at the Loveless Café, a place that serves gigantic fried chicken, green tomatoes and fried okra. When I said it's a shame that I won't be here she remembered that there'd be country dancing that night. It was going to be in a large Presbyterian church nearby and that it would be in fact fun for all of us to go. If we got there an hour early we could have a dance class on how to dosey doe and take our partners by the hand. It's called contra dancing.
Every other building in Nashville is a church. But this particular church was particularly huge. The dance hall was fiercely bright - already nowhere to hide. We were all given badges with our names on it. All night Krauss wore hers, seemingly having no idea that everyone knew who she was. A couple of people came up to her throughout the evening and gave her reverential compliments which of course she didn't know how to take. A couple came up to me and said,"You're so lucky to be friends with Alison. She's so lovely."
Everyone at the dance seemed to know each other, but were not at all cliquey. They were all very friendly. There were women from 16 to 70 in flowy peasant dresses and men often with very long beards. They took the dancing very seriously. The dancing all happens in lines and a couple of times I went in the opposite direction and made the people in front fall over. And one very serious dancing man shot me a look that could kill.
There's lots of intense spinning with this kind of dancing. I was red-faced and dizzy and Krauss said the spinning made her feel a little sick, so we sat down to watch. Somehow she knew that nobody would believe I'd even attempted this kind of dancing so she filmed it on her phone. I just really like the idea of how in a short time she really knew me and something in her made me think I should try to dance. The film however concludes I was wrong about the dancing. I was really bad. But I like to watch it just to remind me of the day I spent with Alison Krauss. We talk about how we love a song that makes us cry. Sometimes it's the tears not cried that makes it easier to cry at a song, a release. Some people are unable to cry even when a loved one dies. "Everyone mourns in their own way and that's why I think it's the movie or the music that helps that come out later when it's not too big."
In a love relationship is she the one who likes to love more or be loved more? "When you're the one giving it's safer. You know you can't receive back what you give. It's free. When it's costly it's harder to receive that. If you're receiving you're not gambling. You don't have expectations so you can't love as much, but it's harder to receive. It's very human and very female.
"When you look back in your relationships it's when were you most happy. Were you happy when you loved more. You had more to gamble. When you loved the other person more you were at your happiest even though it wasn't necessarily safer."
We discuss if loving more or being loved makes you feel more in touch with who you are. I'm not really sure of what we conclude. It's just a big talk on the nature of love.
Does she have the same relationship over and over again but with a different person? "It's hard to say. I'm still working on the things I need to know. I don't think it's the same person."
She seems very wise, evolved. "I don't think so. People will be like you've seen so much and I'm no, mine was a very sheltered life. We've played bluegrass festivals which is not a huge crazy audience. When you look at what the songs are about it's pretty wholesome ideas. Except every now and then when someone's killing someone."
It might be a narrow background but it's a background from which all extremes of emotion are felt. "Yes, in a way. But we started travelling and I missed out on a lot of normal kind of life in this pretty secluded bunch. I mean I had a great time but I was focused on music at a very young age. It wasn't like we have to get a record deal but it was always on my mind. I think it's a pretty common story but I didn't see a lot. I think I was so naïve that I missed out on a lot of things that were going on right in front of me."
I read that her mother said if you can sing you can play an instrument and she believed that. "Yes, I believed that. My dad loved music but he's not as musical as my mum. He was a psychologist, then moved on to real estate. I have a brother, Viktor, he wrote Lie Awake. He plays for Lyle Lovett. I called him when I heard a tune on the radio and he's written things for us before. I heard this song and I thought I wished we had a song like that for this record. So I asked him, do you think you can write this kind of tune for us?"
Her parents and brother have all moved near to Nashville. They are very close and Viktor is a year and a half older. "Isn't it the four year split that makes rivals. My mother said she never wanted to have that."
We start looking at the photographs of her on the album - she's in a Dustbowl waif cotton lawn dress. "It's a real period dress and you can see through it. The photographer, who's a lady said 'No slip. Absolutely not.' You know it was hot and nasty in the Dustbowl. I would think a lot of them would be thinking I'm not wearing a slip. But this is a sexed up Dustbowl. Some of these pictures I thought oh that's a little bit too crazy. I think lady photographers always want to push it. They love being out there."
Interesting contradiction. Krauss is sweet, nurtury, naïve. It's almost an experiment on herself for her to do this sexed up look but she embraces it fully. The dress is cream with tiny flowers, red and white. "I've always been into those kind of clothes. I don't have vintage. I have modern versions. I have phases of shopping. Sometimes you see lots of stuff you like, other times you don't. I think it depends on how you feel about yourself. When you're on top of your game it's 'I love it.'"
I tell her that I can imagine her in her waif's dresses wafting around in her house. She finishes the sentence "feeling lonely"
and then laughs loudly.
Why doesn't she watch TV? "I used to watch it all the time. I put it by this wall and every time I would sit on the couch I thought why do I feel so terrible right now. Even if the TV wasn't on it just depresses you. I used to have bad dreams after watching crime shows late at night so I felt better without it."
I have to have the TV on to fall asleep. "That's very interesting. It's because you don't like to hear your own thoughts. I can fall asleep quicker if I'm listening to someone else. I used to fall asleep during a drive to the grocery store if my mother was driving. I do better hearing someone else, then I don't have to hear myself."
I read that Robert Plant's sister said finally someone had got Robert to sing properly. "Ha. Yes, we keep in touch. We talk on the phone. He's a lovely person. Really funny." Will there be more songs together? "We talk about it. It comes up almost every time we chat but I don't know when it will be. When he first called my son was an infant and we talked for five minutes and then a few years later he called again and said why don't you come for this tribute for Leadbelly. So we played there and a couple of years after that he was 'Let's go to the studio and see what we can do.' So we said we'd try three or four days and see how it goes and it went really well."
I admire her necklace. It looks like a fairy's necklace. "I don't have a lot of jewellery that I have a connection to, that has meaning. Like if I wear this the crust won't burn on the pie.
She's not exactly shy, but she's introspective and the opposite of showy, yet she's in a profession that demands a lot of attention. "I always felt I had the wrong personality for my job. I do much better one on one. When we first started doing this I was really guarding myself and I think that looked a lot weirder than I was already. And I thought 'No, I'm not going to do that any more. I'm going to be myself as much as I can. And then everything changed for me when I made that decision not to be so protected because then you're portraying a false version of yourself. You get so worried that people are going to have an idea of what you're like just because you're trying to keep to yourself, and then it becomes very strange. They're like 'What's up with her?' I don't have the kind of attention - I have a private normal life - there isn't that kind of attention on us here or on me." Maybe because that's how it is in Nashville. Everyone's a songwriter. "A few times things have got crazy. What I do is not really in a commercial environment."
You get the impression that commercial success has never tainted her. She doesn't have extravagant taste in anything. "You know why I think people like shoes. I think when you step into them and you're standing you can feel like a different person. It's all about how you feel. Some you stand and you're ready to go to work." I feel sure she doesn't have as many pairs of shoes as I do, which is over 300. "No," she says. "But I do like them too."
Is there anything she would like to change about herself? "Oh, that's interesting." (More surprised face). I don't think anyone's ever asked me that. I do wish this process of accepting, you know when you're always striving for something, the greatest change comes when you realise that this is who you are and who you are meant to be and you just kind of stop that wanting to change things. That comes in increments for me and I wish it came more. Sometimes you go through and you have a revelation about things. I welcome that with more ease than I have in the past. I don't think you can ever force it.
"I used to remember how I felt when I was seven or eight, and then suddenly you don't feel a connection to how you used to feel because you've changed so much."
I tell her that I remember exactly how I felt. That I was a strange child and didn't really connect to anything. "And now look at you," she laughs. "Somebody's differences are either celebrated or they're not. There's a reason they stick out. they're charismatic if they don't fit in because they're leaders."
And was she like that? "You know it's funny because there were a couple of things after I had a baby I forgot. I disconnected with those things because it's life changing. I lost those tangible memories of what I didn't feel like and what I did feel like and how I became very introverted. By the time I was in seventh grade I wasn't in a clique. I was friendly with everybody but not tight. And you probably feel very alone as I do, even though you make connections. The people you are tight with are few and far between. Having a baby made me forget. I don't have the tangible memory of it. I knew who I was at seven which I remember that lasted up until the time I had him and I think I've been the same since then. Your whole life switches."
Do she think she'll have another baby? "I'm too old now. If I could have had five I would have. But I've got no complaints. It's such a drag when you realize the opportunity is over."
She's only 39, but she seems to think that's way past it. Her eyes are blue, flecked with yellow and grey. Intense eyes. Yet her company is not intense. She's really easy to be with. But the way she connects is extremely charismatic. Perhaps it's because a lonely person needs to connect to people - maybe that's what makes a great artist.
She started chatting about the barn dance she would be holding the next week at the Loveless Café, a place that serves gigantic fried chicken, green tomatoes and fried okra. When I said it's a shame that I won't be here she remembered that there'd be country dancing that night. It was going to be in a large Presbyterian church nearby and that it would be in fact fun for all of us to go. If we got there an hour early we could have a dance class on how to dosey doe and take our partners by the hand. It's called contra dancing.
Every other building in Nashville is a church. But this particular church was particularly huge. The dance hall was fiercely bright - already nowhere to hide. We were all given badges with our names on it. All night Krauss wore hers, seemingly having no idea that everyone knew who she was. A couple of people came up to her throughout the evening and gave her reverential compliments which of course she didn't know how to take. A couple came up to me and said,"You're so lucky to be friends with Alison. She's so lovely."
Everyone at the dance seemed to know each other, but were not at all cliquey. They were all very friendly. There were women from 16 to 70 in flowy peasant dresses and men often with very long beards. They took the dancing very seriously. The dancing all happens in lines and a couple of times I went in the opposite direction and made the people in front fall over. And one very serious dancing man shot me a look that could kill.
There's lots of intense spinning with this kind of dancing. I was red-faced and dizzy and Krauss said the spinning made her feel a little sick, so we sat down to watch. Somehow she knew that nobody would believe I'd even attempted this kind of dancing so she filmed it on her phone. I just really like the idea of how in a short time she really knew me and something in her made me think I should try to dance. The film however concludes I was wrong about the dancing. I was really bad. But I like to watch it just to remind me of the day I spent with Alison Krauss.

We meet at Shutters Hotel on the beach in Santa Monica. Lovely views of the bright blue sky and pale sand. We order lobster salad and white wine. Almost unheard of at lunchtime anywhere in California. Anjelica Huston has never been a conventional woman, one that fits in easily or accepted convention. She's always been attracted to the dark side, the gothic, most at home playing Morticia in The Addams Family, chopping the heads off roses or being a witch or a mafia bad girl in Prizzi's Honor for which she won her Oscar.
She's known for having an alpha presence, yet men in her life have cast heavy shadows: her father, the macho director John Huston, for whom the term hellraiser seems too weak a cliché, and for being involved with Jack Nicholson, larger than life womaniser straight out of the same mould.
She has always had a dangerous presence, edgy. Her face has been called imposing, imperious, corvine. She herself joked it was the kind of face that was only ever seen on old coins.
Today it's the same interesting face, although the eyes look a little surrendered. She looks well put together, blue Palazzo pants, black patent leather, Tori Burch mules, a soft white T-shirt with net inserts that reveal pale flesh, although perhaps not as vampiric as it once was.
She smells exotic, the scent she's always worn, Patou. But there's something that's very much not the same and no matter how light she might try to make the conversation there is a profound sadness. Two years ago her husband of 18 years, Robert Graham, the sculptor, died. The year before that he was sick in hospital. It's been an extremely grueling time for Huston. First of all a period of reevaluating love and what it meant, concluding that this was the man she has loved most in her life. And then losing him.
Her hair is still striking, lustrous, but not as dark as it used to be. And her mouth still looks like it was drawn on. A cartoon mouth that turns up and down at the edges as she expresses pain or joy. Intense brown eyes that are not afraid to look right through you.
She talks about death with a disconcerting familiarity. Ostensibly we are here to talk about Horrid Henry, a rather sweet 3D children's movie where she plays the cruel teacher wearing a prosthetic nose, mouth and wrinkles.
Somehow odd to be talking about something flimsy after we go into the year she spent hoping her husband was not going to die and how it's taken her a while to accept "widowhood". She makes me shiver inside every time she mentions the word "widow" it comes with such pathos. It hurts every time she describes herself thus.
I mention in an attempt to be cheery that I came across an interview with Jack Nicholson, her long time love, where he referred to breaking up with her. He said 'Anjelica annihilated me.' Her mouth doesn't quite turn up at the edges. She already knows what he said by heart. She says that he rather spoilt it by in the next sentence saying that he wouldn't like to change anything, he'd just like to deal with it better.
"I think he recovered quite well. I've seen that quote floating around for a bit and the caveat being would you like to go back and make things work and the answer being no, I'll let that one rest. I paraphrase."
Interestingly she paraphrases in a slightly more negative way. He actually said, "I have made a mistake, but I don't want to go back and correct it. I would rather deal with it."
She says, "You can't go back in time but you can move forward. I talk to Jack. I don't speak on a day to day basis but we keep in touch. It's a nice relationship, mature."
Quite nice that you were able to annihilate. "Well particularly if they deserve to be annihilated." A small smile. "At least he let that be known. I remember after we broke up there being a kind of photo layout of him and his new paramour in Life or People magazine with testimonies from his friends as to how he'd found the love of his life. I found that incredibly…" She's searching for the words, and then just laughs. "There have been so many paramours since then." She instantly changes the subject.
There's something dismissive though in the way she speaks about him. Yes they still speak. Yes they're still friends. It's not so much that she's dismissive of him but dismissive of that adrenalin fuelled passion, the intense uncertainty of their relationship where infidelity didn't necessarily mean betrayal until Nicholson very publicly had a one-night stand that turned into a few weeks, Rebecca Broussard got pregnant, and there was no turning back.
Huston had already been trying for a baby. She remembers the photos in the lifestyle magazines of Nicholson and girlfriend and baby. It was all too public. It's as if she's seeing the magazine spread in front of her still.
Perhaps she can take a small delight in the fact that if she was the love of Nicholson's life he was certainly not the love of hers. She talks about how hard it was. How she couldn't think straight or do anything except look after her husband.
"When my husband was sick it was impossible for me to work. I dedicated my time to him and now for the first time I'm having the opportunity to look outside. Oddly nothing came to me at that time. I had very few offers. Perhaps people knew what was going on. Perhaps it was just luck that I had enough time to devote myself entirely."
In the last year I did three movies. There was one called The Big Year with Owen Wilson and Steve Martin. I've got to know Steve Martin a lot more and I don't mean in the biblical sense. I've been around him for many years and I never thought that he particularly liked me. But on The Big Year I suddenly saw this other side of him. Compared to the Steve Martin I'd known all those years before he was practically emollient. He was jovial, arranging dinner dates. I think it was because he's happily married and I found him to be an inventive actor, quite clever. The Big Year is about competitive bird watching and I play a sea captain and Owen Wilson and I have an ugly past where I forced him off the boat with a knife.
"I did another movie. The title keeps changing although it's being alluded to as a 'cancer comedy'. It's a movie that emphasizes the crazy things and emotions that surround a serious illness."
So she did a movie dealing with serious illness and death just after she'd experienced it. That was harsh. "Life is harsh. My life has always reflected my work. My life, my work. I don't know which comes first. I don't know if that's just what I'm sympathetic to or it's fate."
The waiter seems over attentive, very keen to listen in. she says she doesn't know why she chose this restaurant. It's always been unlucky for her. Once she fell over, slipped on the floor by the bar, was on the ground and nobody came to help her.
She grew up in Galway, Ireland, in the guest house of a big rambling house called St. Cleran's Manor House. Her father loved Ireland. He loved hunting. He loved the freedom. He hated McCarthyism, control. She too has adopted Ireland. It's in her heart. She was very moved by the Queen. "How fabulous was the Queen's speech," she says with pride.
Her father got rid of the house when her mother died and his new wife didn't like it. Something that also causes an ache.
Has she been back to Ireland much? "I've been back a couple of times since Bob died and that's been good for me. I've been back to the house. It's in a bad state. It was a hotel. Merv Griffin of all people bought it. It had a sushi restaurant in it. It was a very strange experience when I went back there. it was like being Alice down a rabbit hole. If you could imagine going from a home with very functional rooms to everything being displaced, every door I opened went into a room or bathroom and some of it not so beautiful. They chopped a lot of the woods down and you could see big mansions to the right and left uninhabited and some half finished. I guess that had been the Germans that were visiting. The cook and the housekeeper sweetly offered me cup cakes and some booklets of St Cleran's Manor House when it belonged to Merv Griffin. You want to see the place functioning and the fire burning."
Perhaps she should buy it? "Ha. I'd have to be in a very different place. Those places cost so much to keep. If there were any rich Irishmen who wanted to marry me that could go together quite easily. Even if they were gay that could be arranged."
The food arrives and she smiles at the waiter. This time he leaves. She talks about the director of Horrid Henry. "He's such a nice man. He came all the way to California and asked me to play Miss Battleaxe. When I saw her she had purple hair and a pointy nose, so I asked for prosthetics and he said no, no, no one's going to be using prosthetics and I said I don't know how to go about this part unless you let me have a little pointy nose and a little pointy chin. They didn't stick on very well but I thought it was integral to her character that she be pointy. I got fixated with this one nature programme that they have on the BBC where a couple set a trap in the shore lands of Cornwall and they caught a common shrew and he had a very long nose, a plaintive look but a hateful shrewish little face, so I thought I've found my template."
She demonstrates the look. "Exactly like Miss Battleaxe." Conspiratorially she says, "She gets kindlier. She redeems herself in the end."
Sometimes her voice is like a cat's purr. A cat who's been sipping cognac and had a few cigarettes, warm and crackly. It wasn't her worse experience with prosthetics. It took only a few hours to get on and off. "Witches took five hours to get on and three hours to get off. At the end of the day you wanted to tear it off but you had to do it piece by piece."
Was she worried at the way she would look as Miss Battleaxe or in Witches. "No, I knew what I was letting myself in for. I don't have a problem with that. It's a kids movie. You're not looking for subtlety. And I have less and less vanity.
"I don't like looking bad accidentally. But if it's my choice to play a hideous looking witch I should be able to do that. But that's not to say if I see a horrible looking picture of myself I won't cringe 'How could this happen?'"
I remember she told me she tried botox once and her husband told her a sad story and she couldn't react to it so he got upset. She laughs at the thought of it completely impassive to his tragedy. I'm wondering does she really find it still funny or perhaps it's too sad. Her face doesn't betray.
"That was the last time I did botox, but one of the oddest things about my present moment is that right now there is no one in my life to tell me what I shouldn't do so I find myself relying on what people have told me in the past. I don't know if I should rush out and do all the things that were forbidden. I've seen some really good looking women in their sixties with not a line on their face and it's a different kind of look, a certain amount of not so haggardness, smoothness. I looked very tired after that year and a half is what I'm trying to say. (When she was looking after her dying husband). I don't know that a little lifting, a little botox, is such a horrible idea this year as it was last. I don't feel adamant about it any more."
Isn't botox quite detrimental to acting as it promotes expressionlessness?" "That's true and that's a reason for not doing it. But a few of my friends have had little lifts here and there. I wonder if I go in and have a face lift that in the next few weeks they'll have an innovation. I just don't like the idea of pain. It's not much of a priority in my life."
Is there another man in her life? She shakes her head looking more relaxed, less savaged by grief. She perks up. "It's strange I've never had a period in my life since I was 15 that I didn't have a boyfriend or several. It's taking some getting used to. There are some moments where yes, I have been lonely. You come home after a night out and you go, what's missing? Oh yes, there's no one to talk to about it. So you certainly feel that emptiness, but at the same time I don't feel compelled to fill that space. The first thing I did when Bob died was I couldn't stop digging holes. I made a garden behind my house feverishly. I went up to my ranch and planted trees. I think that was a healthy thing for me. But I haven't met anybody that I would want to be with in that sense."
Maybe it's too early. "Maybe. I don't think I'm putting out the signals. I don't care really. I'm still living in a house I shared with my husband. I can't imagine establishing a life with somebody in that house."
Is she comfortable living in that house? "Not only comfortable. I think it's beautiful. There is a studio that he built that he was going to work in for ever and ever. It's a very big property. Venice is where I moved for Bob. Venice has been good for me, character building. If it hadn't been for Venice I'd be behind some gate on Mulholland Drive. I'd be a recluse and afraid of mixing with the public. Venice takes the starch out of you. There's a very immediate sense of living that you have down here. Positive character building but not altogether easy. When I first came I was jumpy because I was overly recognised and I thought that would infringe on my freedom or my security. And that's what happened to a lot of celebrities. The next thing you know you are a prisoner. It's pretty easy to stay behind your gates and stay away from the rest of humanity. Much better to deal with being alive.
There is a sense of sadness when she says that, as if something without Graham is not alive. She'd always been attracted to bad boys and risk takers and taking risks. All of that shifted when she married Graham.
She was 39 and felt "as you go through life people reflect what you need. "Great love affairs don't necessarily make great marriages or even great friendship. Robert, he was kind to me. I got married because I finally met someone who told me what they were going to do and did it. He was single-minded in his pursuit of me and a genius in his own right."
All her life previous to this she had been the pursuer. "Pursuing is not a happy place," she shudders. The pursuing seems lifetimes ago, but still too close.
I remember when I met her before we ended up crying. She had said that losing Jack was "like experiencing a death in the family. It was terrible abandonment and loneliness. He symbolised a whole life for me. He was my family."
Thinking about it now, their relationship was very fractured at the time. The fact that he was family was perhaps a projection. Now she has lost her actual family, her husband. She's very aware that her father was the first imprint, a vibrant character who was cruel to actors when he directed them to test them, and was scant with his praise. She would have to make do with a wink or a nod. When he first directed her in A Walk With Love And Death it was a harsh experience. Yet when she won his love it was worth winning.
It seems that all her life, until Graham, she had to pursue, win over, challenge. With Graham the love was just there. Does she feel his presence? "I had one thing happened shortly after he died. I have a shrine to him and I asked him a question and it was answered immediately in a way I can't be specific about. I have a sense of him everywhere. That he could just walk through the door and I won't be particularly surprised. And then there's the knowledge that he's not going to.
I've been following a poet, a Mexican poet whose son was killed by the cartels. He said the effect of the death is so profound that he's never going to write poetry again. " She said it as if she has complete empathy.
" He talks about God and the afterlife and the questions that only get answered when we die. …. So I don't think I'll know until then. It's already an act of faith that people think they will know at that moment."
Her voice is soft, a profound sadness radiates.
Is she religious? "Sometimes. I'm mostly pragmatic. I search less because I know the answer is more remote. It's like when you chase something it runs away more. If you chase a horse you never catch it. One has to have a lot of energy for those things.
"In terms of spirituality what you put out there is what you attract. The object is to get yourself to a place where you can be receptive, where you can be kind, where you don't have to be defensive, where you can be at ease in your own skin."
The dessert menu comes. We decide to share a chocolate tart. "If you're going to have dessert why go for the fruit." Good to see she's all or nothing.
"I have just got a TV series (Smash). For the next half a year at least I'll be in New York. If I'm going to spend half of what's left of my life in New York I may as well enjoy it." It's a series about Broadway with Jack Davenport and Debra Messing and Katharine McPhee, an American Idol contestant. "A sweet thing. It's very well written. I'll put my dogs in cages and just go. I wish I could do the same with my horses. I have two dogs now Mecha, who's a hairless Mexican dog but she has hair, and another one I think she's a lhasa apso. I'm taking them on a boat at the weekend to Catalina island. We in California never go to Catalina island. In the olden Los Angeles days people used to make that trip to go to a ballroom, to gamble and drink too much."
I think it was a boat off Catalina island that Natalie Wood fell overboard and drowned. "I am determined to gather my rosebuds, especially if I'm going to be in New York. I want to make the most of California."
She says that since she wanted to fill up space with doing lots of movies that's when offers came in. "You say it's weird but if your life always works that way it doesn't seem weird. The question is do you choose the work or does it choose you?
"Sometimes we attract things that are darker. Sometimes we chase rainbows because we think they are going to transform our lives. So many girls go after guys because they think it's going to transform them. It doesn't make life easier. Perhaps it makes life harder. Perhaps it just makes you be able to feel. Or perhaps you feel you're going to go after some other people and see how that feels."
Did she do that? "Yes. Absolutely. As soon as I got as I wanted I was like, is that all there is?" These days she says she's not in pursuit of anyone. "Just my friendships and my affections with my animals and with people who are already on my side. Another very strange that happened in widowhood which I never expected is that people can react very negatively to you and be very nasty. That somehow you haven't done enough. Or they're owed something. I think that happens all the time around death. There's an expectation perhaps of money or inheritance. You think people are going to wonderful and comforting and empathic, but they're fucking greedy. That's all I have to say about it. So you get a nice dose of human nature and it can take the sterm and drum out of you. In a way whatever can get you through this, even if it's anger at a person or two for you to plight your sorrow, it will get you through it. It will get you through the pain because the pain is something that gnaws away at you and it's like an affliction. Whereas at least with anger you can strike it out and get it out of you. That no suffering pain is very difficult. So in a way finding myself in a position where I had to be self-protective was good."
She takes a fork full of salty caramel chocolate tart. "People don't want you to be needy. They want nothing to do with a needy person. They want you as strong as an ox. People who have known you strong don't like to see you needy. Eventually you get a little hardened. It's not an easy time for women right now. Men have never been more shrill or more feminine. I've never known so many gay people. perhaps it's the opposition. Everyone wants to settle in with people who are more like them."
Does she? "Do I want to be a lesbian? No. I think when you undergo the loss of a mate sex is the least of it. It seems trivial. I look around right now if I'm in a restaurant or waiting for someone or on the street. I look at men and I think, how old are you? What kind of man would want a woman my age? Would it be a man with salt and pepper hair and a pinstripe suit? Who would it be? Would it be some sort of artistic type that would want to have a shag on the beach? Would it be Rupert Murdoch or Warren Buffet or Donald Trump? Is there a template for the perfect man now? At one point it was Brad Pitt wasn't it. But who would it be now? I suppose Jack was a universal template." A pause. A smile. She had Jack the universal template. "I don't know where the template is now."
We discuss that everyone's template is perhaps based on some kind of psychological father figure. Her father was a womaniser who lived only in the pursuit of passion in that moment. He never thought of consequences. No surprise then that Nicholson and her father loved each other.
"I read another book about my father. Every time I read about him he's making love to more women. This man has a more active love life than I do and he's been dead 20 years. And then I read about my poor mother waiting around for him and tolerating his stuff. That's not something I'd be tempted to do now."
Has she ever done that? "I think I was doomed to replicate that kind of thing. But now, no. My type was, he's out the door, he must be good. A gorgeous deep-voiced flatterer. The bad dad. I understand now that you don't have to jump into anything. There's a certain period of widowhood grace. I completely understand the way you would wear black clothing for a few years, to keep you away from the world. And that's not unhealthy. You need it. When you've been administering to someone who's incredibly sick, trying to be everything to their nothing, you pour so much of yourself out, you are vulnerable, you are shaky after that. You need a period to rebuild.
"There is this constant reminder that we are alone and there's no mistaking that. It's not really a deception. Once in a while you will leave yourself to be part of a couple. You stop making decisions on your own and for yourself. As part of a couple - I've been in that position where someone has said, what are you doing this summer? And I say I'm going to do this and that. And I get that sidelong look from my partner who's like, what about we? You're going to do what? What about us? And I think it's not about us, it's about me."
In her relationship with Graham she never felt dominated. She was able to be her own person and be with someone else. She wouldn't know how to do a relationship as one half of a couple. "My relationships haven't lasted as long as myself, so as a single entity I'm going to own it. Going to New York scares me, but I'm going with it. Where I'm going to be, who am I going to be with, who I'm not going to be with - I don't even have a child to make those decisions around. It's all about me now."
She talks about her horses that are upstate on her ranch. She is sad they won't be going to New York. "They are extremely intuitive. They can tell by the feel of you if you are tentative on their back." She talks about CeCe a big strong piebald mare with a big head, the horse that had been given to her by her father's last wife.
"I've got to my ranch and said I'm going to ride all my horses today. I started with the ones I knew best and saved her to the end. I got on top of her and within seconds I was sailing back to the ground on a cloud of dust. I looked at her immense buttocks. She was an incredible animal and I was like a spider scurrying away from her and then I thought I really don't need to kill myself this way. I used to take risks all the time to really really risk, but now I don't stand up on the back of motorways going 80mph on an Italian autoroute. I was an athlete and a daredevil, I always took emotional risks, I always put myself in at the deep end." Has she stopped? "I'd think twice before I took big risks now whereas I never used to think that way." Does she regret any of those risks? "Not at all. Some were fun and some a bit hurtful. I got over it a lot of love poems later."
She talks about the shift in her and the shift of her whole family to the east coast. Danny will be going east working on some projects and nephew Jack is in Boardwalk Empire. He used to go out with Cat Deeley. "I think they were both too big for the relationship. They both wanted big careers as well."
Briefly there's a look of nostalgia. You see her or you feel her reminiscing about big relationships with big characters, tumultuous ones. Now those love poems? "Thrown away or in the trash."
Now and again you get a glimpse of a naughty look, a sense of adventure. She may not be wanting to ride the big bucking horse but gradually she'll work out a new ride.

We are part of a crowd swaying to the hypnotic rhythms of Roxy Music. Ninety per cent of the people attending Lovebox Festival in Victoria Park, east London, haven't been born when Roxy Music did the Strand. That didn't seem to matter.

The music is so dramatic with its relentless melancholic rhythm, was always out of its time. It doesn't so much feel classic, it feels modern. The crowd are rapt.

Roxy Music have reunited for some summer festivals, but it's Bryan Ferry's face that fills the giant screen most of the time, drawing you in and in. As well as old Roxy, they play songs from Bryan Ferry's new solo album, his first with self-penned songs in eight years.
He is in his black effortless tuxedo and his white open necked effortless shirt. A look that he's embraced lovingly for so many years. He's got long keyboard playing fingers, long rock star legs, and his face is still heartbreakingly handsome. Perhaps all the more handsome because he has endured heartbreak.

The moves are still his own and he doesn't look like a granddad when dancing. I see him sway one leg with the other bent back and remember how he called it the previously week his "Nijinsky pose."

We were in his pied à terre in west London. Downstairs is the office and studio, upstairs an artistically shambolic living space. In his perfect light yellow tan tweed jacket worn at all times indoors he is telling me how he had an accident on a boat so standing on one leg is very hard. He demonstrates, "Look, it starts wobbling."

What sort of accident was it? "It was an accident on a boat. I fractured my spine two years ago." He doesn't say more and "it's taken a long time to get better. Some of my best dances haven't come back, but I'm trying to disguise that."
The word dance comes into so many of Ferry's as a lyric or a title. Dance Away (the heartache) and You Can Dance on the new record. "Music and dance are related since caveman times," he says in the same way as he manages to make so many things sound nostalgic and sad. Yet today Ferry showing me his one-legged Nijinsky means he's actually content, relaxed, amused.

I sit on the sofa. He sits on a straight back uncomfortable chair to the side of me. "It's better for me to have a hard back."
I also work out it's better for him to be to the side of me rather than opposite me, looking at me. He seems more comfortable staring out. More in his own world. It's not that he doesn't ever look at me. Whenever he does he seems half-amused.

Earlier that day I'd run into Jonathan Ross at a screening. Significant because a few years ago, when I first interviewed Ferry he said that we'd met before. I told him that we hadn't and I would surely have remembered, and he said, "No, I don't think you would have done because you were very drunk."

So drunk in fact that I had wanted to monster the karaoke all night. I do remember Like A Virgin, my karaoke classic, and singing Love Shack with Jane Goldman, and I do remember some man coming on stage trying to stop my fun and I had briefly tried singing along with him but the song was too hard… That man was Bryan Ferry. Today he tells me he doesn't remember. Maybe he doesn't. Or perhaps he doesn't want to further embarrass me.
I feel kind of embarrassed though. I'm not sure why. Possibly because Ferry hates doing interviews and I feel like I'm torturing him. I'll ask a question. He'll chew it over like a piece of old gum, mumble, look ahead, look down. I think I'd better ask another question just so one of us can finish a sentence, and at the same time he'll answer the first question.

After a while I get used to it and decide it's partly because he likes to be specific in his answers. That must be why making an album takes so long, although he says he's actually been more relaxed about it. "It was quite refreshing in a way because I'd be in a studio for a while then suddenly be rehearsing with Roxy. It was like, 'Oh, nice to see you.'"
Are you more relaxed playing with them now than when the songs were first written? "Yes. It's exciting first starting your career, but at some point you need to learn how to live with your history, and I'm comfortable with my history."

When you say history, what exactly do you mean? "My body of work." Not personal history? "No, no, no. Work history. There's no story to tell about Roxy ending, no great row or anything. It just drifted away. It's hard to remember if there were any circumstances. It was nothing dramatic."

It's been said that it wasn't so much drifting but stagnation because of Ferry's obsessive perfectionism that made him not be able to decide about what worked and what didn't. He says he's less like that now. "I enjoy my own interaction with the world whatever that means."

Did you think you ran away from the world? "Sometimes. You go through periods in your life when you're not at one with the world. I feel that there's great positive things and positive energy flying around for me now."
What changed in your life to make that happen? "I don't know," he says after a very long thoughtful pause. "Maybe it's just hard work. Sometimes you work away for a long time and there's no sense of anything coming out and people think 'oh, he's not doing anything' but you're actually beavering away."

Ferry is constantly misunderstood on small and grand scales and he wears this mantle like a non-designer jacket, very uncomfortably.
I just saw him perform with Alicia Keys. It looked very spontaneous and seemed to encompass the energy he's talking about. "Yes, because I'm more relaxed and open to diversions whereas once I wouldn't have been."

He tells me that Roxy did a festival in Montreux and they stayed in the Montreux Palace Hotel. "It had long corridors and was like The Shining. Once I was there and was told Vladimir Nabokov was living in the eastern wing. We never met."
Perhaps he could have done a lyric? "He could have done, but in those days I was closed to collaborations because I was still trying to forge my path."

The path has been forged so he can be relaxed with Roxy. Will there be a studio album with them too? "Not yet, but that's not to say there won't be. I like everything to be different so that things can be mixed up. I thrive on variety and contrast."
He tells me that close to the end of Roxy the first time round everything was the opposite. "We did a very long tour and it was too long, a bit arduous. I got fed up of it and I just wanted to do something different. There was a solo album. I got married, and I just didn't want to go on tour any more and be part of a band. I had my own tests and things that life has in store for you."

His voice still has the Geordie lilt, sometimes thicker than others, possibly thicker when he's looking back. He looks sad. Was it just because you wanted to spend more time with your family? "No, um, er. one of the things that you are always afraid of as an artist is repetition, doing the same thing all of the time. I found that playing with the same people you get bored. It's natural to want to do something else."

He did a 1930s album with string quartets (As Time Goes By) and then an album of reworking Dylan songs, Dylanesque. He seemed more comfortable pulling apart other people's work and putting it back together with his own stamp.

His stamp had always been pretty impressive. He was born in Washington, in County Durham. His father looked after pit ponies. I sense an ordered life, a small life that he longed to make large.
He studied art at Newcastle University and taught pottery before forming Roxy. Roxy was as much about a look as a sound. He tells me later about his songwriting process. How everything is layered like an old oil painting. One of Roxy's more important layers was the look; album covers caressed by the beauties of the day, most of whom he personally selected and later became his girlfriends.

There was a long and tortured love affair with Jerry Hall who graced (1975's Siren) covered in dark seaweed. Marilyn Cole was a Playboy centrefold (on 1973's Stranded) and Lucy Helmore, who was to become his wife for 22 years, was on Avalon (1982) even though you couldn't really tell it was her because she was wearing a Celtic helmet and had a falcon on her hand.
Were there any requirements to being on a Roxy cover? "I don't know. The band didn't want to know. They weren't involved. It was my thing. For the first one we used Antony (Price's) model. She chose herself really."

They always used Price for clothes. Whether it was a leopard skin jacket that went with glam rock eyes or a white tuxedo that went with brooding nostalgic eyes. For the current video You Can Dance all the girls are Roxy-like edgy and a little dominatrixy.
Did he personally choose them? "Of course." And the cover of your new album, does that have an iconic model? "Oh yeh. It's a model. It's top secret." I look around the walls all heavy with art, some modern, some nostalgic, one girl in peachy camiknickers that reminds me of For Your Pleasure. Finally he tells me. "It's going to be Kate Moss on the cover. She's wearing Galliano."

How typical of Ferry to get Moss for his cover. He is so at one with that style world. Peter York once said that Ferry had led such a "art directed existence" he should be hanging in the Tate. I wonder if he would have been more comfortable there. He prefers to look out rather than have people looking in.
Did his love affair with style and glamour come because the north east, where I am also from, used to be quite anti glamour, anti style? "It comes from the who do you think you are syndrome. That sort of thing." By this he means in the north east you will be mocked if you rise above yourself, if you look different, if you aspire to a different class, you won't be rewarded.

"I am going there soon. I was there three years ago when I played there. I've always felt comfortable there. I feel in some ways a bit sad that people don't know I come from there, do you know what I mean. I'm not greeted as their son."
It's easy to know why this is. He broke all the codes, from dress code to class code. He moved south, had a fascination for the aristocracy, but at the same time it was always the country living he liked, and that he inherited from his father and grandfather. There's so much about him that's a paradox. He's the ultimate in modern yet he's only just given into texting and mobile phones. He's a typical old-fashioned man like that. He doesn't like the phone at all. Yet there's nothing about him that's typical. Just when he feels really comfortable he looks suddenly lost.

Does he feel that leaving the north and never going back there was because he found it restricting? "No, three was no betrayal. I am fond of my roots. I think for anybody who is creative it's quite natural. If you live in France and come from the provinces you go to Paris because there is a bigger arena for working and more opportunities. It's not a case of turning your back on something, it's a case of I like to think you're taking a bit of it with you. It's a great city Newcastle, and the countryside around it as well."

When he lived there he lived in Jesmond and went out to the Bigg Market, scene of many a Friday night brawl and vomit, in a mohair suit. He goes to look for a picture of the mohair suit. He finds a different mohair suit picture of him in Cuba from about 12 years ago, but the picture was hand developed and it looks like it's from the 1940s.

Because he doesn't like making the direct eye contact it's easy for me to star at him and he doesn't even notice, or maybe he does, and that's why he can't look back. He is an incredible looking 64. A full head of softly conditioned hair artfully grey at the temples. The tweed jacket, the slouchy knitted tie. He likes a knitted tie. This one is dark with a yellowish fleck. How many does he have? "I don't know. 12 maybe. They're all dark blue or black. I like knitted ties."Because they're formal and casual at the same time, a perfect paradox, just like him? "No because they make me think about Gene Kelly dancing down Fifth Avenue." His eyes twinkle a bit. He likes it when he knows he's got something perfect.
He has got a very feminine eye for detail. Is an eye for detail feminine? We discuss that. We're not really sure.
Does he have more friends that are women or men, or is it equal? "Oh, oh, oh," he says, half excited that I've hit on something and afraid that I've discovered something. "More friends that are men. I do like the company of women, but I've had very few, very few, women friends. Sad really."

Why is that then? "Just circumstance." More silence and staring. Is it because he's always been in a relationship so a girl wouldn't understand you having a relationship with another woman? "Yeh probably," he says deadpan. "That's probably it.

"Isabella Blow was a rare and very good friend of mine. She was a friend for a long time. She was a godmother for all of us. A favourite aunt. She was fantastic. A great loss when she died actually, a great loss."

The head bows and the blue eyes all but disappear. You could imagine Blow ticking all the boxes - the right social set, the right stylish set, and someone who was like an aunt, not sexually threatening. Did he know she was depressed? "Yeh, but she would always snap out of it with me. I would always make her laugh. And she would make us laugh as well."

I'd laughed at Ferry today, and not just out of nervousness. He can deliver a nice one-liner. He can send himself up. It's not so strange. Uber stylist Blow, famous for wearing a ship on her head and discovering Sophie Dahl and Alexander McQueen, killed herself in May 2007.

"I've had very few women in my life. I've had girlfriends, you know. Then it breaks up, and then they drift away."
Are you friends with any of your exes? "Not particularly no." None of them? "Well, not enemies." Just nothing then? "Just gone."

There's a really aching silence here. I venture so you can't even write songs filled with venom? There's just nothing? "I'm not saying it's nothing. I'm just saying I don't have ongoing relationships. The friends who I've had who are women are people I've not had an emotional relationship with… I'm not macho but I've got a lot of male friends. I'm not bloky in that going out with rugby mates and boozing…" Yet he has a quiet machismo that men like and relate to. Gay men admire his style, and straight men admire how he still looks so good for his age and attracts so many young women. But more of that later.

Isn't it traditional male, old fashioned in a way, to not have female friends, to not blur any lines? You go out with them. You live with them. Or you don't know what to do with them.
"A lot of my male friends have creative interests or have a feminine side. Maybe they collect art. And I've quite a few gay men friends. I don't know why."

Are you friends with your ex-wife? "No comment," he says as a reflex action. Is it that bad? There's mumbling and there's staring and now there's twitching. His leg, not the Nijinsky one, going up and down, up and down, as I tell him that I read that he said his children were very affected by the divorce and that he was too.

"I would say that most children are affected by any divorce. It must be terrible. I came from an older generation. Divorce existed, but it wasn't so common."
And in the north east people were not prone to get divorced at all. "Very much so." They got on with it, even if they weren't happy. "That's correct. There's a certain stoicism." He says this as if he admires it so I wonder would he have preferred to be stoic and put up with a marriage going wrong. The divorce was based on Helmore's infidelity and one senses he was always restricted and uncomfortable there even though part of him finds restriction interesting. "Would I?" he says incredulous. More pause, more twitching. "I can't really answer that."

I tell him I think he would have done, but now he realises he's much happier. He shakes his head at me and looks a little pleading. "I've had a great time recently because I've got a balance in my life. My private life and work life seem fairly well sorted, and that wasn't always the case. Both seemed to suffer before. And at the moment they both seem possible. I'm not sure what's changed."

Maybe he changed the type of woman? "Maybe." Maybe he liked to have a woman be very demanding, which at the same time as sapping his energy gave him self worth and made him feel needed? He shakes his head at me, not meaning, no, not meaning yes, meaning you are slightly annoying me but you're smiling so I can't really be ungentlemanly and snap at you. Is he nervous, I ask. "Endless things appear in magazines now. It would be great to have dignity if you can, but it's very hard."

I feel very exhausted with this exchange. My mouth is dry. And I also feel very cruel pushing him into areas, where a man, especially a man from the north east would find it undignified.
I'm very aware of how much is written about the age gap between his most recent girlfriends. He not only doesn't look his age, it wouldn't occur to him that this might be odd. He's unworldly, really close to his sons, and a lot of his friends are much younger than him. His son Tara, 20, is the drummer in his current band. He is attracted by new ideas. He's bored with old things easily.

His girlfriend Amanda Sheppard is 28 and was a friend of his son Isaac's first before they started going out in early 2009. She used to work at Topshop in the PR department. She grew up on a family estate with polo lessons and came out as a debutante when she was 17 just like her mother before her. She does seem to be very well put together, confident and undemanding.
His previous girlfriend Katie Turner was only 21 when they started a relationship in 2004. She was one of his backing singers. They were together for about four years. There is no doubt talking about women embarrasses him. But talking to journalists in a seemingly pleasant way can also unnerve him.

In April 2007 he was in Germany promoting his Dylanesque album where he was cajoled into commenting about Albert Speer's buildings and Leni Riefenstahl films which he said were beautiful. He also said, "My God, they knew how to put themselves in the limelight." What followed was a spiralling nightmare. Headlines worldwide accusing him of supporting Nazis.
"Riefenstahl was a substantial artist and it was very strange and kind of creepy what happened. I'd been doing interviews all day and it was the last interview of the day. He wanted me not to talk about Bob Dylan, he wanted me to talk about my interest in art and style, so we start talking about the architecture of Berlin. A few months journalist, female, picked up on it from a German website. It was Kafkaesque to be pulled up on something I never thought. All my life in the music business when some of the best music has been made by Jewish people or black people. Am I anti-Jewish? Are you crazy? It was so absurd, what a strange world we live in."

Was it traumatising? "It was very surprising in a large way. All my Jewish friends immediately got on the phone and said how ridiculous. It was more odd."
Do you think the journalist was trying to manipulate and sensationalise? "He didn't write anything bad. It somehow got lost in translation." Ferry looks sad, but only for a second. His songs sound moody and melancholic and you imagine that for much of the time he is. But there is a lightness about him. Talking about the Nazi episode didn't plunge him into despair. Nor does he feel upset to talk about his son Otis, 27, his pro fox hunting campaigning and brushes with the law.

He is extremely close to all of his sons. Isaac, who used to work for Mario Testino, now works for him. "Otis lives his life and he loves the countryside. It's funny how he loves music so much. My youngest (Merlin, 19) will be going to university starting in September to study English. Merlin is a very strong guitar player. Isaac (24) DJs and takes photographs. He's very multimedia.
"Otis, he's quite a character, but he comes over quite unassuming." Which one is most like you? "All of them I can see elements in. They are all difficult."
So, that's him isn't it, difficult. He seems suddenly easier. "Ha, but of course. I suppose I'm not known for being relaxed. It's not a word that you apply. But on the other hand.." he smiles a benevolent smile.

He too loves horses, but in a different way. And he sees that inherited from his father. He goes and searches out a postcard. It's an ancient one of a monument, hand painted, of County Durham. There are lots of fields.
"My father used to farm the fields. He also looked after pit ponies after the Depression. He was born on a farm where they didn't have running water. They used to have a tub of ice like in movies where you see cowboys settling in the west. He grew up with five in a bed. My mother was about a mile from the town. He would plough the fields, four horses with reins. He would walk behind them, quite a skilled thing. He won ploughing prizes. And then there was no money for the farm and all he knew about was horses, so he had to work underground with the pit ponies. I felt very sad the day I saw him going to work there. The ponies hardly ever came up. They had stables underground. But he looked after them. Anyone mistreated them he hit them. He used to box, bare fist boxing."

Did he inherit a love of boxing? "No, just horses, but I don't ride. But Otis has certainly inherited it. Otis has horses. He lives in Shropshire where he has them. I used to have horses in the country, but not any more. I used to like patting them, stroking them."

There's something very sweet about Ferry patting his horse but not riding it. "I like heavy horses better, ones with feathered hooves."

When he was married and lived in Little Bognor, West Sussex he brought his parents down to live with him. "My father was a great gardener and there's this vegetable garden at my house. He was a very quiet person, incredibly quiet, much quieter than I am. " Hard to believe. Sometimes Ferry is mumbling so much I can hardly hear him.
"My mother was animated. She knew how to make a phone call, how to do everything. He didn't, he couldn't drive. He really liked animals and vegetables. He used to race pigeons as well. I used to go and sit with him in the garden and they'd take them to France and they'd come back hours later the next day. I don't know long it took to fly but we'd sit there until we saw this speck in the distance and he'd recognise it as one of his birds, take the rubber ring off, pop it in the pigeon clock and take it down to the club. He'd be chuckling way. These were quite rough, tough blokes. He was different."

He says that very lovingly. "There's something very comforting about hearing them cooing away. It's a different world, isn't it, really." I tell him that my father also used to race pigeons. He smiles and we talk about my father's pigeons. Then we talk about his love of Sylvia Plath and Scott Fitzgerald. He used to cut Plath's poems out and stick them on the wall. He identifies with the darkness and how beautifully it was condensed.

You can imagine him loving the nostalgia and the lostness of Fitzgerald. Tender Is The Night is even the title of a track on his new album. Why did it take eight years? Did he find it hard to write lyrics?

"It depends, depends on the song. There are many parts. First the creation, the tune, the basic elements. I just put that on to a cassette. So it starts off as a sketch and gradually evolves in the studio. The words come towards the end and that's when I go back to being on my own. Sometimes it's immediate," he says, surprised with himself.
When he wrote the lyric Slave To Love he once told me it was more he was a slave to obsession. Does he feel that still? That's he a slave to obsession, or love, or anything? "I'm free. I don't feel shackled in that sense." He puts his head on one side and looks as if he's questioning that, and repeats, "No. I feel free."

The first time I met Charlotte Church was several years ago. It was a shock. We were at a photo shoot and she was wearing a mini crini style dress made up entirely of tabloid newspapers in which she featured in all the headlines. There have probably been enough for a Princess Diana style wedding dress.

There were stories of how the sweet little 12-year-old sang for popes and presidents and was dubbed 'Voice of an Angel', was out in Cardiff on the lash with Cheeky Vimtos. Holy voiced girl drinks and dances? Now she's 'Vice of the Angel'. There were stories of how bad boy boyfriends used her money and her fame and then sold stories about her. There were stories about how she got together with Welsh rugby hero Gavin Henson who would become famous for his tan, and their relationship would become a Welsh Posh and Becks - the singer and the sports celebrity. Everything about their relationship was a tabloid headline - their break-up, their make-up.

Church was wearing the dress for a couple of hours of the photoshoot, but metaphorically she continues to carry the weight of tabloid invasion: innocent girl turned wild child ladette was just too delicious. But curiously, she wore the dress and her reputation always with one eyebrow raised and a supreme sense of irony.

She was just 16 when she confronted the then Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan in his office about the stories he had chosen to run - grubby boyfriends selling stories of kissing and telling, a picture of her smoking - saying, "Did you not appreciate the fact that I was 13 or 14 at the time?" Her angels wings were being plucked in public and she had to just put up with it.

Guarding her privacy has always been a losing battle. Partly because part of her is straight talking, honest. But as she's grown up in and out of the media and she broke with Henson in May she guards it more fiercely because what she can't do for herself she will do for her children. She doesn't want them subject to playground tittle tattle. By playground we don't mean the school playground, they're not old enough to go there yet, we mean the media playground.

With a new album Back To Scratch about to be released, her first as a proper grown-up with a record deal that is so groundbreaking many other artists will want to follow its pattern, more of this later, media speculation has never been more intense. She does what she always did, tackle it head on. She doesn't suggest an interview in a record company office, chi chi London eaterie or plush hotel room, she invites me to her new home in Cardiff. She invites me to meet her children because she doesn't want to be away from them to come up to London to do an interview. Seeing her with them you see her strength. She really does do it all. Not doing it all in a middle class I've got an executive job and a nanny for my children and my children have iPads kind of way, but in the proper working class way, the way that matriarchs have always done it all; worked, mothered, gone out and grabbed life.

And that's what remarkable about Church. Sure, she's been blessed with a voice that dives right in and reaches for your heart, but her reach is bigger than that. It's the reach of a survivor. It's almost like she doesn't mind what's thrown at her. She knows she'll get through it. Just like the generations in her family before her. And maybe it's that that makes her so watchable and constantly headlineable. The compulsive viewing of her walking the tightrope. Will she fall?

On the day I go there it's pouring with rain, Welsh rain. Particularly strong and right in your face, as she herself can be. I'm pulling up outside Charlotte Church's new home just outside Cardiff. She never wants to move for long from Cardiff. She likes her family and everybody she knows around her, and she likes what she knows.

It's a big house with a separate garage and granny flat. It's set in lush three acres that's populated by a few bushes. But it's in now way grand or pretentious, children's slides and a trampoline fill the garden.

Outside on the porch a lone white toddler's sock. Inside is spotless, spacious, amazingly well organised for someone who has only recently moved in. She tells me she had it like this from day three. A cleaner comes in once a week. The rest of the time she cleans her own floors despite her reputed worth of £11 million. Church has always been compulsive once she sets her mind to something, anything really.

She wandered into her current manager Mark Melton office when she was 11-years-old. OK, she was flanked by her parents, but there was never a sense of her being the little girl that her parents were taking by the hand. She was leading. At the time she was seeking advice from Melton on her management deal that would later dissolve. Melton was at that time a music business lawyer. His first impression of her? "That she was wise way beyond her years." She's now only 24, but it seems she's lived in dog years.

There is nothing one dimensional about Church. She's sharp, hyper-sensitive, fiercely bright. But none of that matters as much to her as being a mother. The fact that is her most important role is never questioned.

There's a wonderful smell of baking, fairy cakes and nutty chocolaty cookies fresh from the oven. Home cooking and baking is something she loves to do with three-year-old "Malteser eyed" Ruby. Ruby is wilful and strong and wants another pink fairy cake.

Church is in tracksuit bottoms, baggy T-shirt, no make-up, hair wet from the shower, no time to be blow dried.

19-month-old Dexter is asleep in the car, so we stand outside only just sheltering from the rain so we can watch for when he wakes up. Church smokes outside while we watch. The stress of recent events prompted her return to nicotine - the breakdown of her five-year relationship with Henson, father of her two children. Henson seems to be having a new career as a reality star. He's now on BBC1's Strictly Come Dancing and ITV1's 71 Degrees North.

There was much tabloid speculation and cliché theorizing that Henson was jealous of Church's talent and ambition, and resentful that his rugby playing career was fading, and that is what sparked rows between them. She says that wasn't true, none of it. She maintains that he was supportive.

As for ambition, I've never seen a shred of it in her in any of the times I've met her. It's more about making the most of every possible moment. And a need to feel proud of herself. A need to be financially supportive to other people. She's never craved materialistic trappings.

She smokes, with each inhale and exhale containing and releasing the stress around her. There's turmoil in her life and she gives a good impression of being on top of it. That's not to say it didn't unravel her completely. She just put herself together again.

That rainy day she had not wanted to talk about the recent tabloid speculation that she in fact had started a relationship with musician Jonathan Powell. They'd been working together for several months on her new album.

The speculation was that the relationship had started before the split with Henson and had been the catalyst for it. Her manager Mark Melton says, "Categorically the relationship did not start until after the relationship with Gavin had ended."

The relationship with Powell is only a few weeks old. She speaks from her heart and says that for the sake of her children she doesn't want to talk about it. She doesn't want years down the line for them to read about these very private things. Powell's ex-girlfriend has already told the News of the World that Powell was infatuated with Church and although the relationship hadn't started while they were together, it seems like there was a strong connection.

Church's entire life has been splashed over the papers and she's had enough. That said she'll still give you honesty and charm. You admire her for her strength and also for her vulnerability. She's always had that. You sensed it even in those Voice of an Angel years. The years when you had no idea of who was the real Charlotte Church, but you knew she was more than orbital-eyed child singing with such strength and purity. I think one could suppose even then she wasn't an angel really, but did have the voice of one, and actually still does.

Her new record, which she mostly co-wrote in Nashville, features this heartbreaking ethereal voice. It's the juxtaposition with all those tabloid photographs of her in nightclubs drunk, wild, real, that makes it all work. It makes her real.

In any situation, be it as a TV celebrity judge on Andrew Lloyd Webber's Over The Rainbow, or hosting her own show, or hosting her own life, she is always herself and always true to herself.

The previous week when we met at the video shoot for her single Back To Scratch, she invited me down to Cardiff because she hated the thought of another days away from her "babbas" and would I mind coming to Cardiff. She promised that she and Ruby would bake me cakes.

The video shoot represented everything about the other side of her world, the commercial and the glitzy, the arty and the eccentric. The director was the iconic Kevin Godley, famous for his visceral touch. He has made some of the most watched music videos for U2, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, just about everybody.

He'd created a giant white padded cell and post-production would include eight different Charlottes representing all the emotions involved in the break-up of a relationship - frustration, anxiety, isolation, curiosity. I'm sure Church has felt all of those things.

That day she seemed defiant and stripped down in equal parts, telling me that the new album "is sounding banging" and how that now she doesn't have a record company she feels totally in control. She signed with an investment fund to finance the album, a deal masterminded by her manager Mark Melton.

Even though she co-wrote (with Guy Chambers) most of the songs on her last album Tissues And Issues, there was a sense that she was moulded to conform to the tabloid cliché; the crazy chick, the wild child. The songs were the confessions that those who like to live vicariously through her, how she got hypnotized to give up smoking. The songs on Back To Scratch are lyrically complex. She is out of the box she was drawn into.

When she was growing up there might have been tussles for control with she and her mother. Church, although never defiant, was always strong willed. "I've been doing this for so long I know how I want to be portrayed and how I don't want to be portrayed."

That said, with typical Church paradox, she says, "Now nobody else is making decisions, when my manager calls me to ask me something I'm knee deep in nappies and I tell him to decide."

When I ask Melton how he sees this paradox he says, "With a lot fo what Charlotte says, it's said tongue in cheek. Charlotte is very much involved in the key decisions. She's quite happy to delegate to me the day to day stuff. I would describe it as a relationship between a chairman and a chief executive. I run the record company for her. There's no doubt she's a strong powerful woman."

The new record deal was based on Church's decision. "She decided she wanted to come out of the sausage factory. She felt that being tied to a record label would mean the label would have heavy input into the content of the album. And the styling. And she'd had enough of that. So we secured some funds from an investment company called Power Amp to enable her to make the album on her own. We are now going to buy out of that Power Amp deal early because it's financially advantageous for Charlotte to do so.

"She's formed her own record label called Dooby Records. How she arrived at that name was a mixture of Dexter and Ruby. The label is going to be distributed by EMI in the UK and we are talking to a division of EMI, Blue Note (the classic jazz label now to Norah Jones) in the US.

"The man who runs Blue Note, Ian Ralfini, is an A&R legend. He signed Fleetwood Mac and he's gone crazy for this album. The interesting part of the UK side of it is that Charlotte is burdening some of the financial risk to start with. Until we break even she is bearing that risk.

"The beauty of the deal is that once we do break even she will be earning three or four times as much per album as she would have done under an old record company agreement because it's her record company. She will have not only the artist's share but the record company share, and EMI will get the distributor share in the UK. In America it will work slightly differently because they are licensing the record there because it would be impossible for me to run the whole thing."

The idea that they have developed for the record in the UK is almost unprecedented. "Not many artists have done this sort of deal and you have to be an established artist to do it. Provided we sell enough to pay for the marketing the upside is tremendous.

"The two main advantages from an artist's perspective is control and ownership. She will now own her own recordings whereas traditionally in the past the record company owns the recordings. It's been a source of annoyance for artists over the years that they never own the copyright to their work as an author would.

"It's a shrinking market. We are all selling less CDs than we used to. That's everyone from U2 down. So we have to think of a way of making more money from the ones we are selling, and this is our attempt to do that."

It could be that Church and Melton have come up with such a groundbreaking deal that other artists will follow. There is an overwhelming sense that it's all about taking control back. She wants her privacy back so perhaps against her nature she has learnt to be private, to an extent.

At the shoot she was looking extremely svelte. "I was much thinner. I was 8 stone 2lbs because I started smoking again. I did miss my boobs, and now I'm starting to level out."

She talks about her weight before I make a comment. This is because her weight has been one giant aspect of tabloid speculation. Fat pictures, thin pictures. Bitchy comments always calling her too fat or too thin. It's as if she wants to front it out, get it over with. Control the situation. Talk about it before anyone else does.

"A lot of people see me as just tabloid fodder. That's what I've been made into. But that's fine. I've worked hard. I've trained." I tell her she doesn't have to justify herself as a singer. She was singing opera when she was 12 and made it sell in bucket loads.

She's sung to the Clintons twice, the Pope, the last one, the sweet one, Bush, Prince Charles, who she particularly liked. Does she feel saddled with that Voice of an Angel malarky. "No, no. I was really lucky to meet all those people. I really enjoyed myself." She doesn't complain.

The Tissues And Issues album seemed to complete the rebellion from sweet-voiced child star to wayward teenager. You feared for her voice on that album, and in retrospect it seems that she feared for herself, that a tiny bit of herself would be lost in the way she was marketed - the fallen angel, naughty but nice.

Back To Scratch is Church's first album as an adult. Mostly songs she's written or co-written. If she didn't write them it feels as if she could have because the words ache and resonate with what she's been through. Even when she sings Joni Mitchell's River, 'I wish I had a river I could skate away on' it's with a sadness direct from her soul, a life experience way beyond her years. There's no doubt it's a profound album and there's no doubt that she's profound, despite the way she's been categorised.

She tells me that she hopes people will like her album "but nothing matters compared to spending time with my children. They're my life." And that's how she persuaded me to come to Cardiff.

She was the one who moved into the new house and left Henson in the old one. She thought that was better for the children, that they would still go to somewhere familiar.

"Of course I loved that house. I had my two children in that kitchen," she says as we sit at her new kitchen table with its giant fully filled fridge and immaculate surfaces. Her best friend since she was 13, Naomi, helps with the children and lives in the granny flat. They've known each other since they were five.
Church feels loyal and comfortable with her old friends. She feels comfortable with ordinary working class people. She's not insecure enough to want to be defined by wearing labels. "I don't really like the idea of spending lots of money on a handbag. Never in a million years would I do that. I love shoes and I've got lots of ridiculous high ones that I take off after two hours, then I'm walking around everywhere barefoot. I'm quite a barefoot girl," she says, the metaphor feet on the ground resonating. And in many ways they are. It's just the rest of her life that isn't. She's always had this duality. The ability to blend perfectly in a nightclub in Cardiff and with legends and luminaries. She's always said she would never be attracted to anybody famous.

"It feels unorganic to me. We are at this party, you're famous, I'm famous, let's have a chat. That said I met Justin Timberlake when I was 18. I liked him but I wasn't really interested. I just shy away from things like that.

"The paparazzi were bad enough with me and Gav. He was famous but a sportsman. Imagine what it would be like if I was with somebody famous like that. I like normal boys because I'm not interested in that world. There are so many people that are affected by this industry. Get over yourself please. I'm completely disinterested in all that." Without saying anything this speaks volumes about her new relationship with Powell. He's a musician but an ordinary boy who worked for years at her parents' Cardiff pub.

Ruby is diving up on to the table, pulling herself with amazing strength and appears to be doing the splits on the table. Quite the gymnast and utterly fearless. "I was completely fearless at that age and then you turn 16 and you become self-conscious. I was never frightened to perform." She was never in awe of audiences of thousands or just one very important one like a president or pope.

"Now if I go to perform I'm nervous. To be honest much more than I've ever been used to."

I wonder if this is because of the aftermath of the break-up because so much has happened. She nods. "And because the songs mean so much to me." The songs on the album are so love torn they ache. I wonder when she wrote it. Was it a self-fulfilling prophecy or subconscious?

"When we split up we didn't release that information for a long time because we wanted to digest it for ourselves. We kept it to ourselves for six or eight weeks, but a lot of it, yeah, I seemed to write my future. I'd better be careful next time. Write happy songs. I've always been a girl for minor keys though.

"It wasn't meant to be a break-up album. Back To Scratch isn't about me. I wrote that about my auntie because she always seemed unlucky in love." People could say the same thing about her. "I don't think I've been unlucky. I think I made bad choices when I was younger."

She certainly did. She picked out two low life bad boys, Steven Johnson and Kyle Johnson, no relation physically although they seemed to have in common a desire to cream money off her and sell stories to tabloids.

"I was a teenager. Dreadful choices. But that wasn't luck. I don't think Gavin was a bad choice at all," she says with an unexpected sense of pride of him. At least when their relationship derailed he did not sell any stories.

I remember her telling me when she first met Henson. She texted him congratulating him on a goal for Wales. She'd met him before when she'd been going out with Kyle Johnson but was too loyal to call him. When he responded to her text they got together fairly quickly. He was a Welsh rugby hero and she was the Welsh angel. It seemed fated.

She told me at the time that she was infatuated and in love. She was brimming with it. And after the earlier disasters you just wanted it to work out fairy tale.
"I don't regret any of it," she says. By this she means Henson, her life with him, being that perfect couple, and then not. "It's all been a massive learning curve. Imagine if I'd been this child star that only see this glamorous life. I'm not like that. My family are proper working class people and I'm proud of everything I did, although it feels like a lifetime ago."

Church has been famous for half of her life. She's been public property for so long. The learning curve is how to keep something back for herself and still be honest.
"The problem with me and Gav was that we were so amazingly different people in every single way. That was amazing at the start of it because we were always teaching each other new things. Then we were just too different, too far apart. Different beliefs in everything. His world is alien to me. All that training. He's so strict with what he eats, what time he goes to sleep. And my life was alien to him." It makes total sense that now she's with a musician.

"I really just threw myself into the kids. We were still living together for a while because we wanted to keep it quiet. It eased our parting. Once you finish a relationship you let go of all the shit that's filled your head. It's easier to appreciate someone."
It's been written that they argued non-stop. "I just don't like confrontation that much. I don't think it was about arguing. I think one day we were just, what are we doing? It takes a lot to get me angry. I don't think I've ever lost my temper in my life. We just became apathetic and thought is this right?

"We made a decision that rather than keep it going till the kids were older we thought we should split now when the kids were young because they're never going to know. They're not going to have much memory before this. When I see Gav now he seems much lighter."
It's also been written that she got irritated by the fact she had to do everything and he didn't contribute. "Yeah, and now it's much better. When we were living together he'd come back from training and I'd do everything. It was easy for him. He'd always play with the kids, but I'd bath them, change them, feed them. And now when he has them he has them completely and loves it. And the kids love going to see him. He has them usually two days a week."

When did the turning point in her relationship arrive? It does seem rather dramatic. There was a full wedding proposal story in a tabloid magazine about how he whisked her off to Cornwall to present her with a heart-shaped diamond and then only weeks later the story of the split.
"It was odd. We both believed it. We both wanted it. Or at least that's what we thought.
"We did a photo shoot. We both felt really stupid afterward thinking that people would think we'd orchestrated it."

Perhaps it took that proposal to really look at that relationship and ask the question is it really forever or is it a habit? "Yes, maybe. It did."
It was when he did 71 Degrees North in Norway where various celebrities journey to the Arctic and play the survival game, that Henson's thoughts about the relationship changed.
"He was quite different when he came back. I'd hardly spoken to him for a month and it made us both rethink what we wanted rather than just try to keep everything going. We both asked is this actually working for me."

Before the proposal they were having disagreements. It's as if they thought the magic of the heart-shaped diamond would solve their problems and they came to the heartbreaking conclusion that it wouldn't.
"I'm OK. I'm liking a bit of freedom, apart from the babbas who dictate a lot of my time. It's quite nice to be free, but not forever. I do like men quite a lot. I'm just not ready for a big thing yet." And with typical Church paradox she contradicts herself. "I can't really do little things. The shortest relationship I've ever had has been 18 months and I've only had three."

You feel that Church is hypersensitive. Her mind is fast. That combination means that perhaps relationships deepen far quicker than she intended them to.
Does she fall in love easily? "Yeah. But I don't think that's bad. I think that's great. Better to have lived and loved and lost even. Why should I be more guarded? I am an impulsive girl and it feels right to be like that. There's too much caution."

Does she mean she's never regretted anything? This is a little hard to believe. There have been so many things to regret. The boyfriends that sold stories or pictures from her phone. The nights chronicled by paparazzi spent drunk without shoes. The fact that Voice of a Fallen Angel was too easy a target.
Perhaps she doesn't have any energy to waste with regret. She reassures me she has absolutely no negative thoughts about her Voice of an Angel era. She says that what happened next was not a rebellion because she felt restricted. She says many times, she just felt lucky.

She never went out to get drunk, filled with angst, wanting to escape, but just to have a good time, to laugh a lot and be one of the girls.
Recently it was reported that she had kissed a girl while partying. Is that true? "Probably happened. Can't be sure. I have no recollection. There are so many photos of me zonked out on a couch. Surely they would have had that photo if it had happened."

Over her mantelpiece there's a picture of her arm in arm with Naomi and either side of it sculpted letters L-O-V-E. I wonder if there used to be a picture of her and Henson in there? "I know it makes us look like a pair of bloody lesbians, but we are insanely close and if I kissed anyone it would have been her. That night out was soon after I split with Gav and I was in London and the paparazzi were everywhere."
Was that her initial reaction, get drunk to forget? "Not really. I was just out." It feels an important correction.
By now baby Dexter has woken up, been brought in and is toddling about quietly. He seems a very calm baby, very mellow, with eyes that stare wisely. "I'd hate to think that I wouldn't have any more children," she says as we admire him.

She says several times how she's an "even keeled person". In many ways that seems true because she's so down to earth and normal. But there are such forces in her life that clash it's hard to believe that she remains so. There are many directions in which she is constantly pulled. For a start balancing her international career as a singer and being uber mother. But maybe these things are not as far apart as we imagine. She comes from a generation of women who have worked hard and are used to straddling work and motherhood and not making a big deal about it, just getting on with it. Id Wales there are (figures to come) women who are the breadwinners, who essentially do it all. It's not considered something special but something normal.
She misses her children when they're not around yet she knows she'll have to promote her album feverishly and tour to succeed.

She's planning a move to the States next. She talks about how much she appreciates an ordinary life, yet she has a huge artistic drive and you wonder how normal that can feel for how long. Does she worry more than before that this album won't succeed? Obviously there's a lot riding on it. "I'd love for this album to be a success. It wouldn't be the end of the world if it wasn't, but I think it would hurt my feelings. "
She is going to do everything in her power to make sure her feelings will not be hurt. Next year she will base herself for three months in America, probably New York, for promotion, with her children. "I'd rather have a base for us there than flying them around backwards and forwards to the UK." She hopes that Henson will also fly out there to be with the children. "I couldn't not see them for a week. I could just about do three days. That's as much as I could tolerate. I'd be very gibbery." She's already known in America but she wants to re-establish herself as an artist as opposed to the child who sang for the president.

Every day when she goes out there are a trail or two or three paparazzi chasing her. "Ruby goes nuts. Naughty man. Stop taking photos of mummy she says. Yesterday they papped me with bovva boots, a yellow hoody, wet hair and no make-up. And part of me thinks oh I don't really care, but the other half of me thinks oh if I looked better, if I looked a bit thinner, people would be more receptive, I'll get more endorsement deals, I just know I will. Isn't that horrible?
"Will I stay at this weight that is my natural body weight? Depends how money hungry I get. It's not for me. I'm making money for lots of people. I might try and exercise but I'm really crap at it."

You believe her when she says it's not for me. She's always been the breadwinner for her family, responsible way beyond her years so now it's become the norm. "When I started smoking the weight dropped off me and I wasn't really hungry. But now my body's adjusted I'm ravenous all the time and I have a nicotine addiction. I won't be able to sustain a live show with smoking and I don't really want my kids to see me smoking so it's got to stop."

She's laughing about all the contradictions, but they're all there. She's never been irresponsible with money. Even when she was earning millions she would have a credit card with a spending limit of £1,500 a month. She's not greedy for excess and she would never think of living beyond her means. But you feel her pressure. There wasn't money in the family and she's now taken it on as her duty to pay for everybody. Her grandmother was a dinner lady and grandfather a plasterer who was nearly a rock star.

She has another cigarette break. She was once hypnotised to stop smoking but she said it didn't really work. What worked was being pregnant. Eighteen months of her five year relationship was spent with her being pregnant. "I was super happy. Nothing could spoil my mood for a long time. I was completely in love with my babies."

Does she think she fell out of love with Henson at that time? "I think it was over a long period of time that that happened. We love each other still." The atmosphere suddenly thickens with sadness.
"It took us a long time to realise what was going on. You know, two young kids who are involved in that, and then you realise you are worlds apart."
Henson was so very handsome and she was so very excited by that in the beginning. "Absolutely. It can blind you. And he is a good guy. It's just that we were not good for each other unfortunately." So there's no going back? "No, no, no." She shakes her head.

She lifts up her T-shirt and shows me her stretch marks. "My battle wounds and I'm proud of them." It seems like another metaphor for how she is. She doesn't care how much she suffers as long as she feels and she'll show you her flaws rather than have you discover them.
I'm wondering how much of her nature she's inherited from her mother Maria who got diagnosed bipolar, spent time in the Priory, took an overdose when she believed her husband was having an affair, and came out as a self-harmer.

"It's in her nature that she's up and down," says Church cautiously, looking a little clouded and distracted by Ruby who is demanding more fairy cake. In her autobiography that she wrote when she was only 21 she described finding her mother unconscious and the terrible panic.
"If I have unrest in my life it affects her because she's my mother. If I'm happy she's happy. I wrote a song, The Story Of Us, about my mother and I. She cried when she heard it." The song is about what it's like to feel intensely like your skin is on inside out.

Did she feel that she had to look after her mum when she was growing up? "Not always. Sometimes it was like that and sometimes she looked after me. It was swings and roundabouts." It's still hard for her to talk about. She pauses and I'm not sure if she's thinking about saying more or gets disrtracted by Ruby crying hard. You get the feeling that her mother lived life intensely and their bond is very strong. "I think I get my even keeledness from nothing around me being on an even keel." Or maybe what she's seen and heard and lived through is so extreme that her life seems even keeled.

It's hard to believe that she's only 24. "Well, I don't feel 24, but I suppose this is what it feels like to be me. It means that anyone around me, whatever age they are, who has a problem, I can generally speak on it. And most people when I meet them I can guess what's going on underneath. Let's just say I've managed to build up a reasonable amount of experience and logic."
Who does she go to with a problem? "Naomi, Bampi (grandfather), the wisest owl I've come across, and my mum sometimes. I've heard positive thinking works a treat most of the time," she says in a way that I'm not sure if she's serious. She's always written poetry and works out a lot of angst that way.

Her birthday is February 21. She insists she is a dreamy Pisces, not an Aquarius. "Poof. Aquarians are hard work." Henson is an Aquarian.
She's in talks with various production companies to revive her TV show as well as touring the album. Isn't that a conflict? "Of course. But I think it's absolutely doable if it's scheduled cleverly."
She returns to her theme of the power of positive thinking. If you believe it will work out, it will. Artist, host and supermum, she can do it all.

Dannii Minogue is wearing a sleek navy dress with a small peplum, newly cropped hair, a fringe which perches over her orbital sparkling blue eyes. She is tiny but alpha. She looks like she's channelling both Audrey Hepburn and Victoria Beckham, both of whom she honours as style icons in her book Dannii: My Style.
The dress is from her own range Project D, a collection that manages to be on trend without being trendy, simple, womanly, marketable.
She looks in control at the Stella shoot- she always does - but soft, empathic. A quality which has been emphasised since having her baby Ethan just over a year ago with Kris Smith, rugby player turned model, who she met in a nightclub, Space, in Ibiza in 2008.
Dannii Minogue is a woman of constant reinvention. She's had a lot of stereotypes to fight against. Firstly the misconception that she was Kylie's younger, less famous sister. In fact as a child in Australia she was the star. A household name in the entertainment show Young Talent Time way before Kylie got so lucky and go Neighbours.
In previous incarnations Dannii was a little brittle, a little botoxed, a little harsh. She was never afforded the chance of showing her softer side until Simon Cowell put her on X Factor where she became the most successful judge - her acts won it twice.
Her best-selling autobiography My Story last year revealed how she felt being bullied at school and bullied by Sharon Osbourne on X Factor and bullied by the stuck-up Australian Prime Minister's wife Sonia McMahon, the mother of her ex-husband Nipped Tuck actor Julian McMahon. (She married him aged 23 and they were divorced a couple of years later). It was honest, raw, emotional. It also discussed the loss of her best friend Laura to cancer and how the excruciating pain continued when her sister Kylie suffered from the same illness.
Dannii Minogue though has always been a survivor, and suddenly she was liked by the public as well. One of the biggest turning points was when she cut off her hair into a chic little bob. It made her at once stylish yet accessible, aspirational and open all at the same time.
In the style wars, if such things exist, between the X Factor judges, Dannii rocked. So much so that her publishers commissioned the second book about her style secrets. A glossy self-deprecating and fun read.
After being decreed most stylish and best judge by readers of Heat magazine, everyone including Minogue was shocked earlier this year when it was announced she would no longer be appearing on the show. Why would they do such a thing?
"I think Simon was concentrating on getting the American X Factor organised and by the time they came back to us with the dates - and the dates had changed twice - it would have meant me flying back and forth from Australia to the UK weekly for ten weeks in a row, which they were quite happy for me to do. But I said, 'Have you ever done that flight? You do know where Australia is don't you? And I have a baby, so family comes first.'
"I had already started shooting Australia's Got Talent and our dates were locked in." Her eyes widen and she lets. She looks right at you. There's not a fleck of anger or disappointment. More relief.
"I actually think it's worked out well. I'm in a happy place. I'm more relaxed because it's a stressful job. I just saw Matt (Cardle, her protégé and last year's winner) and it brings it all back."
She's nostalgic only for a moment. A fashion range, a new book to promote, and a baby are a hard enough juggling act.
She is sipping herbal tea post shoot. She tells me "one dress is the new power dressing Tabitha (Somerset Webb, her partner and co-founder of Project D) have decided." Her shift to simplicity came with the chopping off of her hair. "Suddenly everything in your wardrobe looks different and you can't imagine wearing it. My hair became sharp and I had to sharpen up my clothing. It was good timing. It happened before Ethan came along, but I would have had to simplify things anyway. That's why the hair's got even shorter, because I didn't have time to do it."
Minogue insists that both drastic hair changes came out of practicality. The bob because her hair was too damaged. The crop because the mid-length took too long to do. "Through necessity I needed it to be even more simplified to be a mum running around, but I like it."
Hair and dramatic life changes and headset are inextricably linked. One only needs to look at her past hairstyles featured in her book. This hair is about loving fashion, creating what she says is the first fashion book specially created for the iPad, being a mum and liberating herself from X Factor.
Has she been in touch with her former X Factor co-judges and contestants? "A little bit, but once you finish the show it's like the last day of school. It all builds up to that last day and then you don't want to see anyone on that show for a while. You need a break from the face and from the whole thing. I go back to Australia where I'm in a different world and a different head space."
During this trip to London she's managed to catch some of it on TV. How weird was that? "It felt normal because I used to watch it before I was on it. I think it must be hard for Louis now that there isn't any of us lot there."
She and Louis Walsh got off to a bad start because he and Sharon Osbourne are best friends and Osbourne claimed that Minogue was the reason that she left the show. Minogue's take on that has been detailed in her autobiography. It was a gruelling experience and Osbourne has never disputed it "because it was the truth. But it doesn't matter. I'm over that."

And she grew close to Walsh. She definitely became softer. Becoming a mum must have made everything different. She nods, "big difference because work used to be this much" her arms outstretch depicting the most possible amount "and now it's this much" she depicts a much smaller space, maybe 20 per cent.
"Ethan is yummy, edible, adorable. He does the cutest things." She changes into a black dress with a nipped in waist and layers of diminutive pleats to attend a fashion show. "It's not on trend. We just do pretty and classic."
She pours her tiny feet into even tinier black patent Louboutins. "My feet are going to be crippled by the end of the night, but it's a fashion show. You've got to pull out the big guns. Did you read the chapter in my book where I say I've come down off my heels? Apart from flip flops I didn't own any flat shoes. Kris came with me to buy some. I've never been a mum before but I had to do so much running around…
"Kris said you're making it complicated and it's not complicated. So when we were in Miami he helped me choose some sneakers. My feet are so small they were kids ones on sale for $20. Kris loves shopping. I don't love it. Even supermarket shopping he loves. I don't mind running to get something, but browsing I can't do."
There were some rumours a while back that you and Kris were not getting on? "Yes, that was a hard time for me. I was physically unwell, my thyroid stopped working and I had appendicitis. I ended up in hospital the last trip I was here and had my appendix out. Tabs came to nurse me.
"Leading up to that I was getting thinner and thinner and stressing because I didn't know what it was. If you feel unwell it takes its toll on everything. Normally you can put on weight if you have an under working thyroid. But there is a percentage of people that have it reversed. It was very hard to concentrate, you can't sleep, and I got very weak. They explain it to you as running a car without petrol.
"I was finding it hard to pick Ethan up and I was thinking I'm a new mum, I know I'm tired but surely it can't be this hard. But you don't know if you have a baby you think it must be normal tiredness as you're taking on board being up at night and learning how to be a mum. But it got to the point where I thought this cannot be normal. Poor Kris. He was thinking after getting through the pregnancy and the baby that everything would be just fine and he couldn't work out why I wasn't well. It was bloody difficult."
She had just got out of hospital and just found out that her thyroid wasn't working when X Factor asked her to travel back and forth to Australia every week. "I'd just had my appendix out so it was an easy decision, I'm not well enough. It was quite shocking for the producers because they were used to me saying I'll come here, go there, jump on any plane. I love the show and I probably wouldn't have been able to make the decision to stop otherwise, but it just had to happen and it was the right time because I need all my strength to be a mummy."Does she want to be a mummy again? "Maybe," she says falteringly in a way that seems to mean she'd really like to. "Yes, but honestly until I get my health back on track it's not a possibility. They went back into the caesarean scar, so it's a year before you an even think of getting pregnant. Meanwhile I turn 40 next month (October 20)… I see babies and I think yummy. Tabs's baby will arrive in November, so that will be great."
She looks amazingly well and vibrant, but she always did deal with a crisis by putting on a smile. It's in the Minogue genes. "I feel not sick. I'm not vibrantly jumping out of my skin. I feel like I'm on a curve upwards and it takes time. My body's been through a lot in the last two years. The workload alone would make anyone feel tired. The jet lag. The X Factor. The baby. The being sick. But I'm getting there. I can't wait till I've got the energy to work out."
She's a big fan of yoga and power plate, but you're not advised to do a power plate after a caesarean. "I've done absolutely nothing. People get angry with me because I'm thinner than before I had a baby and I'm eating cup cakes. I started eating them when I was pregnant. I have to say I also make the world's best carrot cake."
I heard that she had recorded an album. "Oh, I recorded some songs, but that was a while ago. I'm not signed to any label." She looks as if recording an album is absolutely the furthest from her mind. Becoming a mum has changed her profoundly from a woman who was always driven and worked hard since being a child and didn't stop.
"When you have a baby everything kicks in. But the baby is a priority. I loved all of it. The being pregnant. I'm so jealous I keep rubbing Tabs's tummy. I loved feeding him. Everything. I'm definitely less focused on work things and I enjoy them in a different way because when you leave your baby you go to work and you enjoy it for what it is. Being a full-time mum is definitely the hardest job and I've got it easy. I've got a great little baby."
How did it change her relationship with Kris? "We have a bond that's incredible. When you're pregnant and the little person is taken from you you feel that separation. Maybe that's what your body is meant to feel so that you want to have another one. But I think something similar happens for the guys. They've got this beautiful thing and they get used to a whole new set-up. I think he'd have a football team. Everything seems easy to him. I had to learn all of it because I hadn't been around a little baby. People are saying are you missing the X Factor and I'm honestly, no. I loved it but I'm happy where I am. It excites me that I've got a balance in my life. Before that it was all work stuff and that's a very dangerous place to be because if that work suddenly is not there or doesn't excite you any more then you're left with an empty bubble.
"Kris and I look at our schedules to make it work. He really likes being in Australia and it's really good for both of us being there and good for Ethan."
What does she most look forward to? "The next chapter. Being well." Of all people Minogue knows what it's like being undone by illness. "I've had so many amazing things that I feel lucky about but being well and enjoying it, that's the most important."

Dannii: My Style is published by Simon & Schuster at £19.99. The new Project D winter collection is in stores nationwide.

Glorious day Soho House LA. I'm sat on a balcony table when I see Emily Blunt approach. I greet her with a friendly hug, one of those I-know-you-because-you're-so-familiar recognitions; that bitchy secretary in Devil Wears Prada; that spoilt rebellious girl with a girl crush in My Summer Of Love; the princess in Gulliver's Travels; and more recently as Matt Damon's star crossed lover in The Adjustment Bureau and her instantly recognisable chipper tones in Gnomeo and Juliet.
We both look at each other wondering why we just hugged each other. Strangely it didn't feel empty. Blunt is in grey skinny jeans, a bashed up black T-shirt, bare faced but for mascara. She looks toned, lean, and like she's just spent a few hours with Tracy Anderson's DVD, but not her whole life.
She's fully living in LA with her actor husband John Krasinski, the handsome one who was in the US version of The Office. "I love LA," she says. "If you're an actor you have these rather accelerated friendships with people you work with, so that stops it being a daunting alienating time. You can go into a restaurant and have that annoying acting thing of going 'Oh I know you because of what I do', so even if the initial hug has a certain flair of insincerity you are quickly able to strike up a conversation," she says doing that penetrating, knowing stare for a millisecond.
"When I first came to LA I experienced the bloodbath of auditions. Summer Of Love had been made but not out. Weirdly, that's the only film that I've done that I would recommend for people to see which is strange as I've got no clothes on for most of it, so it does seem strange to encourage people to see me barely dressed. You guys like girl on girl? I've got just the film," she laughs, a pared down naughty laugh.
Her look may be LA but her manners are definitely self-deprecating English. Despite her award nominations for Prada, The Young Victoria and Gideon's Daughter, she never takes anything for granted. "The job is very precarious. There's an irrational insecurity that doesn't go away. I don't want to be in a situation where I've become casual about it."
Indeed, Blunt is always on top of her game. She'd never cast herself as just the girlfriend or wife facilitating a leading man's box office. She's always gone for the strange, the clever, the neurotic. She'd rather take a small role and make it her own. "People like to label you but it's important to mix it up and hopefully play other people that people like seeing you do. I still panic about work. You can usually find something, but you want to find something that makes your heart skip a beat. It's not that I want to play weirdos, just people who have got some kind of conflict and a sense of purpose."
Hence she is the feistiest Juliet ever in Gnomeo and Juliet, an animated 3D garden gnome version of the Shakespeare classic set to Elton John songs.
"You get Benny and the Jets, one of my all time favourite songs." She starts singing "B-B-Benny and the Jets."
"You have to be the worst over actor of all time to do animation. You don't see anyone's face apart from the director's, so I would show up in my pyjamas."
They made Juliet look a bit like her. "They filmed me and they copy your facial expressions. It's awful when people make you aware of the ticks you have.
"They wanted to make me a tough Juliet. She's not a victim. I made her more of a tomboy. I made her not too posh and accessible."
And she's a gnome with a chubby face, no waistline and no costume change for the whole movie, so no dieting for this role. I've read that she had to starve herself to play Vogue secretary in Prada. "I was 22 then so it was easier to keep weight off.She was supposed to be emaciated. She was starving, that's why she was desperate.
"Things change when you hit 27 (28 on Feb 23). When I did Adjustment Bureau last year (where she played a ballet dancer) I had to be really thin again and it was hell. I also had to get ripped at the gym."
She had to learn how to dance. "| lasted two days of ballet when I was four. I cried and said it hurt my feet. At the beginning there was some keenness to hire a dancer. I said to the director I think you need an actor to do it. He said if you work your arse off I'll let you do it and literally my arse almost fell off. Six days a week I had eight weeks prep, I did two hours dance a day and an hour and a half in the gym. A strict diet, muesli in the morning, chicken salad, some fish and some sushi. It's an endurance test to work like that, but these dancers are athletes, in order to play one you really have to live the life of an athlete. It was interesting to live the physical life of the character and there was an element of understanding her more. She was all about the work and strong. I did contemporary ballet and they are very strong and muscly."
Did that make her feel powerful? "Yes," she brightens, "I felt invigorated all the time. I definitely pulled muscles and threw things out and there's a pain that comes with it when your muscles are just screaming because you're so tired. Essentially you feel this robust energy going through you, which is a new feeling. I've always worked out, but not like that. Over Christmas I did a month of binge." Certainly it doesn't show. She puts that down to a couple of weeks of Bikram yoga. She orders fish taco and hummus.
"I love to cook and I love to eat. I make a great Thai green curry and a great roast chicken. I do it all the time, obsessively. It relaxes me and I get zen'd out. I go into a meditative state and I don't want anyone helping me. My mother said trying to cook for four kids every day was just agony."
Blunt grew up in Roehampton, south west London, the second eldest of four. Would she want four kids? "I don't know. Probably not. It's a lot isn't it." It wouldn't surprise me though. There's something very old-fashioned and capable about Blunt.
The Adjustment Bureau is part science-fiction thriller part romance based on a Philip K. Dick story. It's about destiny and true love and can you change the course of it.
"Two people meet and they have an electric connection, as you do when you meet that person you feel you're meant to be with. They meet and it's instantaneous, they want to be with each other. They seem to have a secret language from the get go. Then comes the sci-fi element who are seen as big brother who can effectively manipulate people's paths in life. Matt's character finds out about this system and he wants to beat it to be with her, but the Adjustment Bureau are trying to keep them apart because the theory is she is enough for him. The relationship is fulfilling enough so he will not further his career and she won't go on to do what she does and that will have a knock-on effect."
Do you think it's possible that if you are with someone that's enough for you? "Yes, I think it is a possibility."
Has she ever felt that, that she is in a relationship and not driven to do anything else? "Well, I am in a relationship that's incredibly fulfilled and it's just the best thing ever. I don't think it makes me less driven, I think it makes me more confident on the drive."
Does she mean it provides a core of stability from which she can flourish? "Absolutely, I think when you're happy in a relationship it subconsciously gives you more than you realise."
You wonder if it caused tension with her husband when she had to get passionate on film with Matt Damon? "It comes with the job. By that time Matt and I had become friends and I got to know his wife Lucy. I laughed the whole time because it's so embarrassing to kiss somebody who is your friend. And there's nothing sexy about it."
Does she think that the premise of the movie is true, that there is such a thing as destiny? "I think you know very early on and I have always been a subscriber to fate. I look back on a number of things that have happened to me and wonder if what would have happened if something had directed me in a slightly different route. Would I have ever met this person? I am grateful for where these strange near misses have taken me."
For instance had she never met Anne Hathaway she would never have introduced her to her husband? "Er, I don't know where that came from." I've read it many times. "It's definitely not true. John didn't know Annie when we first met." So how did you and John meet? "I try never to talk about it. I feel I need to keep that for us."
She falters when she says this because in many ways she's a very open person. Perhaps it's because she felt she said too much about Michael Bublé. They were together three years until July 2008 when they broke off suddenly. She even sang on his album Call Me Irresponsible and he wrote the love song Everything for her.
Does she think she's ever going to sing again? "Probably not. In the shower maybe. '
She blushes at the mention of his name, ever so slightly. Is it a blush or is it just the sun? "He's a good guy but I'm not in touch with him any more. It's a weird thing bringing up exes. It's weird when I'm married. It seems a long time ago." Weirder than kissing Matt Damon? "Ha. It's all weird. It's a weird life for sure."

Until recently Hayley Westenra was known simply as the rather demure classical singer with a sweetheart face. She's from New Zealand. There seemed always to be something very old fashioned about her. Something conventional. New Zealand does after all have a reputation for being conservative.
Her first album was the multimillion selling Pure. She was signed to an international deal with Universal Records when she was just 14 and moved backwards and forwards from Britain to New Zealand.
She took on charity work. She smiled sweetly. And her voice soared effortlessly and she seemed just like her album title, pure.
Having an album called Pure may well have been a terrible burden, an impossible role for her to fulfil, but a marketing man's dream. For Westenra a bit of a nightmare.
Her teenage years saw her either posing sweetly for super safe magazines or the occasional paparazzi shot where she hated the way she looked. And that sent her into an inward spiral. Typically she didn't talk about it or confront it, she grappled for control by deciding to control her food, ie not eat very much of it. But more of that later.
Today she's no longer a child woman, and while not overtly sexy, no longer buttoned up demure. She's wearing a cream lace top with lots of faux vintage cocktail rings and dark skinny jeans and boots and leather jacket. More rock and roll than opera babe. She orders tea and biscuits. Biscuits because she's jet lagged and needs the sugar. Although when they arrive she eats only a tiny corner.
Her latest album is Paradiso which she made with Ennio Morricone - his most famous music now with lyrics which she wrote together with Tim Rice and Don Black.
He's not at all fazed by the fact that she wrote lyrics that stand together with two of the world's most celebrated lyricists. In fact she's rather pleased that the track she wrote the lyrics for - Gabriel's Oboe - is the "lead track." She wasn't even daunted by wrong with "the maestro" although she concedes at the beginning "I was scared of saying the wrong thing, so I was quiet.
"We had a really nice rapport over the piano though and it was really good to get the nod of approval from a musical genius. I owe a lot to the maestro," she says with a chirpy little smile, making light of the fact this record has been a kind of metamorphosis for her.
"In the past I think all my previous albums are… very nice. In fact they're perfect. They're very polished, which is fine, but I definitely like this new sound which is more honest. It's more raw. Ennio and I were on the same page about wanting to capture just the moment and the emotion.
"People say it sounds like how I sound live. My voice and range has also changed. I see that it's fuller now. A singer is nothing without music and these songs… I've been waiting for a long time. There's more of me in this one."
Indeed there is. Sometimes her voice is even gravelly with pain. Sometimes anger. Many different moods of love, sensitive and forceful. And sometimes unexpectedly feisty.
"I don't think I've ever had the opportunity to sing from my guts before. Perhaps I've never been drawn to those places. Feels like the right thing to do, throw it all out there. Maybe it's therapy, maybe it's this music that brought the emotions out of me. Maybe there's anger that I didn't know was there. Ennio made sure I didn't run away from anything. In real life I'm the peacemaker. I don't like confrontation."
Weirdly the album is very confrontational. It's not quite easy listening, polished air. It's demanding. Don't mess with me.
"That was exactly the message I was trying to get out." Her face seems suddenly open, questioning. She tosses her sheets of hair behind her. "In the past I never liked to talk about myself." She now realises that this might have made her seem boring. But she wasn't ready.
A series of events led her to change her mind about that. And it all started when she was aware that her relationship with food was potentially destructive. There have been two occasions in her life. Once when she starved herself down to a size zero when she was about 18, and again at the beginning of last year when she was 22 when she began binge eating.
She'd just finished a world tour and was completely exhausted. She'd had bronchitis and pushed herself to keep going. By the time she got back to New Zealand at Christmas '09 she was wiped out and felt that she did not want to continue. "You just become self-destructive…
Interestingly she changes the 'you' to the 'I' confronting it right on. "I became self-destructive and it was a vicious cycle. You're tired, you eat really bad food, you feel worse, then you eat more. I wasn't sleeping. I was more tired. It was exhaustion. And I had to cancel the rest of the tour. When I get exhausted I get depressed. I had to perform while I was ill, pushing myself through it. Working myself into the ground. I turned up for a sound check in Manchester and barely had a voice. I thought there's no way I can perform like this, so I cancelled the rest of the tour. Having tried to perform when I was ill was a scary position to be in. So I thought I don't want to go back on stage, I want to eat ice-cream and chocolate biscuits. Usually if I'm ill I would eat healthy food. It was as if I didn't want to get better, I didn't want to be able to perform."
She was once voted Peta's most sexy vegetarian. But instead of making an effort to go down to the local health store "I might actually have partaken of some McDonald's. Not too much because that would require me to go out to get it. Most of the time I was walking round the house hoody up eating all the naughty things that were in the house. Things that my then 15-year-old brother would like. I couldn't help myself. I couldn't stop.
"Perhaps I'd been extreme the other way before. I used to not eat dairy. I used to be very strict because I was told dairy was bad for your voice. What's wrong with a cup of English breakfast tea as long as it's not chocolate ice-cream. That would be asking for trouble. Because I was super-strict on myself…" She doesn't finish the sentence, but she means she rebelled.
At this point her career hung in the balance. She really didn't know if she wanted to do it any more. There'd been a lot of touring, being away from her friends and siblings. She was lonely and exhausted. She calls her depression a kind of breakdown. "That's what I thought I was going through. I told my family, that's it, the end."
2009 had been a tumultuous year where her new found celebrity status was cashed in on by the marketing men and the charities and how they feed one another. She became vice president of the Vera Lynn Trust helping children with cerebral palsy. She launched The Poppy Appeal in 2009 and went to visit troops in Basra. She also did several trips to Ghana as an ambassador for UNICEF. Her special project was raising money for girls so they could ride to school. She felt lucky. Perhaps even unworthy, so it became terribly important "to have the opportunity to give something back. But I don't want to spread myself too thinly. Trips to Ghana were gruelling. It's hard to comprehend I've been given this life and they've been given that. I thought I was doing good, but maybe I wasn't doing good enough. It's a big world and there's a lot of suffering."
She suffered because she felt she couldn't do enough. It all culminated when she cancelled her tour, went home to New Zealand, decided she couldn't do everything. She would do nothing. "I'm an all or nothing girl."
She kept on eating the bad food, not getting out of the house. "I got really depressed. I convinced myself that I could never go back." And then? "I guess something must have happened. New dates were confirmed and I thought, 'This is it. Now or never.'
"Two friends had just died within weeks of each other. One in New Zealand who crashed his car. And another in Croatia. He crashed his motorbike. They were the sweetest people. None of it made any sense. I had to re-evaluate everything. Funnily enough I rediscovered my passion for performance. I realised how important singing was for me. To do a show, to get the applause. When you lose a loved one or someone close to you it makes you live each day to the full. Be aware of what you're saying to people. Never go to sleep on an argument. All of that. But really it reminded me of how fragile life is. You don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. You expect to see them and they aren't there. I haven't been able to take their names out of my phone book. I have to remind myself not to stress about these little things. So the tour deadline came up and I thought that's it, I'm going to get my act together."
How does she stop the stress getting to her? "Yoga, pilates, and acupuncture, all really help me to be balanced."
How much weight did she gain with the bad food diet? "It was only a couple of months of bad eating. I definitely gained weight, but not that much."
Today she's skinny and curvy in all the right places. A UK 8 to 10. She does not finish the rest of her biscuit. "I have a photo shoot tomorrow."
She tells me about the time she went too far. It was when she first started seeing pictures of herself in the papers. "Initially I thought it was healthy. I wouldn't have dairy, I wouldn't have sugar. When you reach about 18 you stop being able to eat what you want. I saw a picture and I thought I didn't like that. I became more strict on myself. There was no comment on it. It was just me. I thought I looked full of puppy fat in one of those gossip magazines. It's hard when you see lots of photos of yourself. You can't help but be a bit self-critical. You can say I'm happy with my curves, but as a girl you're going to be a bit self-conscious."
You wonder now just how those child/woman photo shoots affected her. Being separated from her family, having one parent travel with her at the other side of the world, while the other stayed at home to look after her younger sister and brother. Only ever occasionally reuniting as a family. For instance when she performed at Carnegie Hall. She was singing to luminaries - Tony Blair, George Bush, The Queen. She was home schooled. A tutor saw that she got 10 GCSEs.
"At the time it didn't cross my mind as out of the ordinary. This was the way it worked. I spent quality with mum, then with dad. Looking back it was tough on both my parents. My dad gave up his job as a gemologist because it was proving too much. (He's now back valuing gem stones for insurance reasons). I was unaware at the time how tough it was for them."
And she seemed certainly unaware of how tough it was on her. Especially when she turned 18 and she was left to her own devices. "I was away from my friends and my family and touring non-stop. Food was a thing to focus on. I got into the habit of not eating much. I thought this could be really unhealthy because I could be focused on creating music or reading a book. I think it was the exhaustion of just working too much and having to work through it.
"I've always been health conscious. When I travel I'd always look for health stores and find for instance almonds. So I would go to the States into say Wholefoods and buy fruit, some salad, an almonds. And be eating nothing really. It's terrible, but you get used to it after a while. I know that's not healthy because I was eating just boiled vegetables, nuts and seeds and it was terrible. I just got into the habit of saying no to things, no to food.
"I get confused with US sizing, but I think I would have been a US size 0. That's what I tried on anyway. That's perhaps a UK 6. I look at the clothes and I think how did I fit into this. Now I'm a UK size 10, which is curvy for this industry, but it's normal. If you're an actress you're going to look bigger on screen, so I'm happy I'm a singer.
"My band consisted of all guys, usually a bit older than me, and I'd be quite alone. It's not healthy. You need to spend time with people your own age. Hang out and gossip."
How did your wake-up call come and you realised you were eating too strictly? "When I started to tour with a group called Celtic Woman (I know she's from New Zealand, but her grandmother is Irish, so she qualified).
"Suddenly I was around other girls and they were eating easy, normal food. So I started eating the same and started putting on weight. I was happier being around girls and having company. I was in a better place and I didn't mind putting on weight at all."
What strikes me as sad as all this was going on and nobody even suspected. And every time she was asked to do another charity event for Vera Lynn or go to Basra to sing to soldiers she said yes. Everyone thought she was unbreakable because she never complained. Everyone thought she was a girl with a sweet voice who never had any problems.
"I've got a lot more confidence now. When I listen to this record (Paradiso) it sounds emotional. The full range of emotions. And people don't think of me expressing all those things. They think of me as ethereal and angelic." She laughs. Perhaps it's a naughty laugh. It's not really a dirty laugh though. I wouldn't go that far.
She thinks her main problem is being too much on her own and too much in her head. "In the past I'd be in my hotel room all day. Now I force myself to get up, have breakfast, be around people. It's a great way to stay healthy, be around people.
"One of the girls from my management travels with me, so we'll go for a walk, check out shops or do a bit of sightseeing. Whereas before I would have watched TV or stayed on my computer I realise it's not healthy."
As she tells me about her upcoming tour in New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong, China, then the UK, it does sound exhausting. But she sounds a lot more balanced about it. She doesn't deprive herself of alcohol. She likes red wine. "I eat what I want in moderation. I am not ever going to eat a whole bag of biscuits, even when I'm tired."
When she's in London she lives in Chiswick, west London. "It's where I'm very happy. I'm not very good at decorating because I'm used to everything being like a temporary camp. I find it hard to think 'let's make this a permanent home'." Her boyfriend, Arnaud Sabard, has certainly helped with that, helping her erect the flatpacks, and he has certainly made a difference ot her life because he is another person to stop her being alone on tour. He is her sound engineer.
"We're not always together. We both like to doing our thing, but I get used to travelling with him and then I miss him. We knew each other for a good few months before we started going out. He was on that tour where I got sick and I had to cancel the rest of it. So I wasn't in a good place. I wasn't in the mood for a relationship. But weirdly he was really supportive when I had bronchitis, but as a really nice colleague. Nothing started till we met each other again on the next tour. He's seen me when I'm down, and that's important. He was supportive. That's how it started. And he really is a lovely boyfriend. He encourages me to be healthy. He's a good cook and he's always telling me it's important that I have a good meal. My own cooking hasn't gone anywhere. I got good at baking. I wanted to learn how to make chocolate cookies. But then I just end up eating loads of it. I was worried I would eat the whole batch when I'm jet lagged or tired, so it thought I'd better stop."
She once said she wouldn't mind being a recluse. "Did I? Did I say that? I'm really enjoying not being a recluse. Catching up with my friends. Going out dancing, or just to the pub. I'm the complete opposite, I'm enjoying being social.

Jennifer Lopez is in a simple dress, long bare legs outstretched in front of her. Her voice is creaky with a chest infection, her eyes bleary. But her work ethic is as strong as it was back in the Bronx days she immortalised in her 2001 hit 'Jenny From the Block'. It's been a long time - and many blocks - since the tough, determined girl born to Puerto Rican parents danced her way around Manhattan as a backing singer for the likes of Janet Jackson and Paula Abdul, and there seem to have been many Jennys since then too.

We are in a sunny Beverly Hills hotel room. It is not a suite. There are no Diptyque candles. And the thread count on the bed linen is probably not more than 420. It certainly doesn't meet the stipulations she was alleged to have demanded of her accommodation when she was J Lo the diva, who routinely rode in Bentley convertibles with her fiancé Ben Affleck, or went to gangsta-style clubs with her partner of two and a half years Sean Combs (P Diddy), and was chased by paparazzi.

Life is quieter now, with her husband of five years, Latin singer Marc Anthony, and two-year-old twins Emme and Max, but it's certainly not simpler.

'I just did two 24-hour flights back to back for a party in Kazakhstan that I had to perform at.' Was it worth it? 'I wouldn't have gone otherwise. Totally.' The result is that she's feeling exhausted and fluey, but she's a trouper. She's known worse (such as the trauma of cancelling her wedding to Ben Affleck hours before it was due to take place in 2003).

Her life has certainly changed pace. And her new movie The Back-Up Plan reflects that. It's about a woman who decides that she doesn't want to miss out on having children even though she doesn't have a boyfriend. So she plans to have IVF and a baby on her own, and on the same day as the treatment she meets a man with the kind of romantic possibilities that she'd given up on. They fall in love and everything happens in reverse. Instead of romance, proposal, marriage, baby, it's - she's already pregnant with somebody else's baby, then romance, then relationship.

The movie is cutting-edge funny and a return to form for Jennifer. 'It couldn't be more perfect,' she says, 'the whole idea, in a romantic comedy, that the pregnancy is the obstacle. It's always, "Oh, my boyfriend can't commit, I can't commit, I'm in love with my best friend." But this story seemed to me to be about a real problem. "Are you going to take on this child? Is it OK to ask somebody to do that?"

Does she think she would have used IVF to get pregnant if she hadn't met the right man? She shakes her head. 'It takes a lot of bravery to have a child on your own. I have a girlfriend who did it and I really admire her. Especially knowing how much help you need. It's a lot to be a working mum and think, I'm OK on my own. I would like to think that I'm strong enough to do that, but honestly, I don't know if I could.' Several aspects of pregnancy come across.

In the movie she gets pregnant with twins - how much like real life is that? 'Well, that's very real life. I loved it. The woman who wrote it had just gone through a pregnancy, so it was all very fresh in her mind. And it was very fresh for me - the twins were about a year old.'

Several aspects of pregnancy come across in the movie as funny, gross, horrendous, embarrassing. Were they aspects she related to? 'All of it. I wanted to put as much in as we could that was real: the overeating, the burping. Why not? It's funny too. Pregnancy and giving birth are weird, strange. The growing life inside you - it's like an invasion of the body snatchers.'

Jennifer did not have IVF herself. 'A lot of people thought I did because I had twins, but what they don't realise is that when you are over 35 the chance of twins increases, especially if they are in your family, and they are in mine. I was 37 when I got pregnant, so I had both factors going on.' She knew she was having twins at seven weeks. 'I didn't believe I was pregnant, even though I had taken a pregnancy test. The plus sign didn't look dark enough and I kept thinking that maybe it wasn't a good test, so I called the doctor, who said I should come in and check. And then she said, "Oh, it looks like you're having twins." It was a big shock.'

But also a joy. Jennifer had been broody for years. Almost as soon as she got together with Marc (in 2004, a few months after the broken engagement with Affleck and after Marc's separation from his first wife, former Miss Universe Dayanara Torres), she realised that their relationship was more bonded and grounded than previous affairs; they came from a similar place, both in touch with their Latin roots. The turbulence that had defined her love life with Affleck and Combs gave way to something else. She had already been married twice, first in 1997 to waiter Ojani Noa (an 11-month marriage that was eclipsed by her huge success with George Clooney in Out of Sight) and then in 2001 to dancer Cris Judd, whom she hoped would provide her with the mix of stability and edge she needed (they divorced in 2003, after Jennifer got involved with Affleck). But with Marc, she says, 'it was the type of relationship that you dream about. You get to the point where you realise what's real and what you are imagining to be there. It takes a lot of looking and getting past the disappointments.' With Marc it seemed right to start a family.

How has she changed since becoming a mother? 'I think it calms you down a little bit, even though you have less sleep. Everything is at hyper speed, which puts things into perspective: this is important, this is not important, this is something that can wait, this is something I need to take care of. You speed up your decision-making process and you prioritise in a different way.' Jennifer redefined the way women think about their curves by never being afraid to display her tiny waist and wide, full derrière. She was used to having a dancer's body - flexible, toned, sculpted. Losing that must have been difficult. 'Yeah, I do remember distinctly when you don't fit into your clothes any more. At first it's cute when you have a little bump. You wear big sweaters. Then one day your jeans don't fit and you think, oh no, it's happening. I was on tour until I was six months pregnant, so I didn't grow the way I would have if I had been sitting at home, but once I was just sitting around, that's when I got really big.' How long did it take her to get her body back afterwards? 'A while, a year. Six months afterwards, I did the Nautica Malibu triathlon and I was still 16lb overweight. Over the next six months I got it back.' Was there a strict regime? 'No. I don't get too crazy any more. There was a time when I really worked out, but I was never manic about it. I did what I could. I've got good genes. But I care less now.'

In the movie, her character Zoe craves junk food all the time. 'I'm not a junk food person. I like food, though. And you do feel very hungry. Your body is asking for food. The baby is asking for food. It's like a factory. That's why I made the decision when I was eight months pregnant to do the triathlon after I had the babies. I wanted to know I was the same person as before I had them. I wanted to be that person more than ever for my babies. I wanted them to be proud of me. I wanted them to think, "I've got a special mum, she was amazing, look what she did!" I didn't want to lose my ambition and drive to do amazing things.'

She always defined who she was by how hard she could work and how much she could love. How does she still work so hard and fit that in with the demands of motherhood? 'I want to be the best at that too. I want to just do it all. When we travel we travel with the babies. I try to rehearse in the house. I've adjusted my life so that I can spend as much time with them there. I'm lucky to have that luxury so I'm going to use it to the fullest.'

Is she ready for another baby yet? 'No. I think I just need to work right now. I do want another baby, because once you have one you realise what a blessing it is; what an amazing miracle and how much they enrich your life. But you still have to be an individual.'

Do the twins have a special connection? 'They do. Max is always climbing out of his cot to get in Emme's. But then they fight like cat and dog. And I've figured out the difference between men and women by seeing their innate characteristics. She is very careful, and you can see her thinking; men don't think, they attack and deal with the consequences. We approach life and love in different ways.'

'He is still that, and I'm the biggest challenge that he's ever had to deal with, and that's what keeps it interesting for us both. John Cassavetes [the director and actor] once said that he and Gena Rowlands battled their whole marriage. There was an intensity in their relationship. He said that in some ways they both knew that if the battle was over the.

Her own love life used to be like a roller coaster - enormous highs of passion with lows of betrayal. How does that translate into her relationship with Marc? Did she suddenly settle and find that stability suited her?

'For all the stability we provide for each other, Marc and I are both artists. We both like intensity. We are both very passionate, and that still exists in our relationship. If we didn't have that it would be boring. Too boring for me.'

She once told me that her perfect type of man was not a straightforward bad boy but a boy who was a perfect mixture of hard and soft. A little bit stubborn, a little bit of a challenge; you had to work to get to the sweet bit. Does Marc fit into that ideal? Is he still that? Hard and soft? relationship was over. They cared enough to battle.

'People seem to think that when there's conflict in a relationship it's always a bad thing, but I think you need a challenge. The dynamic between us is passionate and that's why it works. We are compatible, but at the same time we are different enough to make it interesting.'

I tell her that I've read a couple of stories recently that said they are different enough to be splitting up. Has she read those? 'Of course. It doesn't really matter to me. We know what's true.'

Jennifer's relationship with fame has completely changed since the early days. She used to think success equalled fame, which meant a constant accompaniment of paparazzi and tabloid fever. Then she realised artistic credibility came from getting on with it and headlines didn't make a relationship work. But she's used to controversy, to stories spiralling out of control, and seems pretty unflustered by it.

She hasn't read the story about her first husband selling their wedding photos, she says (although there have been reports in the press that she's suing him over it). 'Somebody asked me about it recently but I didn't see it. I'm not in touch with him at all.' Is that your decision or his? 'It's just your life goes into different chapters. It's like the first grade. You just get past it.'

What she doesn't want to get past is the experience of love. All the different kinds of love she's had - fierce, warm, treacherous; how to keep love going; how to stub it out if it's bad. 'I'm putting all that into a new album called Love?, because I still find love very confusing and challenging. I also feel it's time to open up the dialogue about what that word 'love' means, what do people do in love? Should we have better standards in love, [agree that] it's not OK to be dishonest, to cheat, or be pointlessly cruel?'

Isn't it becoming more and more difficult to juggle children, acting, music? Does she feel she should decide to go in one direction?

'Oh no, I'm not ready to do that.' What about the crop of new girls that are storming the charts - does she feel threatened by them? 'No, I love all the girls out there now - Beyoncé, Rihanna, Carrie Underwood, Pink - all of them. I don't feel in competition with them. I just want to be me. And that's always been good enough.'

Was reaching 40 last year a watershed birthday? 'It was the best party of my life and the best year so far.' So she doesn't worry about body parts moving in the wrong direction? 'Not yet.

Somebody told me 45 is when that stuff happens. So maybe I can hold on for a while.' What she's really holding on for at the moment is a small part on the hit TV show Glee. 'I'd just like to do an appearance because I love the show so much. It's one of my favourites.' But as well as her new movie, her new album and her ambitions for television, her social life in Miami is pretty full-on. Her husband owns part of the Miami Dolphins American football team, and they are also soccer fans and friendly with the Beckhams. Victoria commented recently that they were the same dress size. Jennifer's eyes widen in shock at this. 'I don't think I could fit into her dresses. She's a tiny thing,' she says. 'But she could certainly fit into mine.'

There's no one that can do comedic rage like John Cleese. Outrage, anger, disgust, are all honed into an elemental force. You see it released in his body first. It can twist and stomp, and his eyebrows swoop and rise gymnastically.
He was brought up to beautifully contain this anger, and indeed any other emotions in the mild seaside town of Weston-Super-Mare and at various public schools. Emotional excess was forbidden. Touching was narcissistic and looked at with disgust. He would not easily express what he felt about anything or anyone except by converting his emotions into jokes.

Cleese is hyper sensitive, sharp. Can wear his skin inside out. He feels intensely. He's always been on a quest to understand these feelings having propelled himself into hour upon hour upon hour of various forms of therapy. He even married a therapist, but he certainly didn't find what he was looking for there. In fact his divorce from third wife Alyce Faye Eichelberger, who some people call Malice, is one of the most expensive divorces of all time relative to his wealth.

He is currently doing a two-hour one-man show called The Alimony Tour. His divorce from third wife Alyce Faye Eichelberger settled under California law will cost him $20 million, $13 million upfront and then $1 million a year. The show is touring Scandinavia before it comes to Britain next year. The Scandinavians find him hilarious. Restraint is in their culture.

If at 70 he had wanted to take things easier there is certainly now a financial imperative not to do so. He says that on stage. Off stage though you get the impression he's rather enjoying it. It's as if he's been stripped back down to his real self once again. The show must surely be cathartic.

The first half is mostly about the divorce. It's dark and hilarious. He talks about what else he might have done with $20 million other than keeping the botox industry alive, and there's a pap shot of his ex-wife at a cash machine removing a giant wad of money. A small percentage of the audience thought it was unfair to his ex-wife to show her as this one-dimensional grabby creature. He says her divorce lawyer who he says is the spiritual godchild of Blackbeard the pirate and Heather Mills. That gets covert laughter from some people too.
Of course it's cruel. That's why it's funny. It's almost taboo. He talks about taboo humour illustrated best with a sketch from the Holy Grail called The Dark Knight. It's where his limbs are amputated one by one and in the end a limbless creature that still thinks he can win the fight. When the film was tested 95 per cent of people said that was the funniest part, and 95 per cent of people said that was the part that should be censored. Cleese seems most comfortable when he's treading that line.

The second half of the show charts a behind the scenes look at his major creative successes; Python, Fawlty Towers, and A Fish Called Wanda where he was nominated for a writing Oscar and should have won.
It all features the beautiful blackness of his humour that is a direct descendant of his relationship with his mother which was extremely complicated. They seemed to communicate best through black humour. She was extremely neurotic, had phobias about so many conflicting things - claustrophobia, agoraphobia, the dark, the light, escalators, lifts, and many more. She died aged 101 in 2001. He says she managed to go through two world wars, the Cold War, the creation of the State of Israel, the Berlin Wall coming down, and managed to notice none of it.

One day she called him to say she was depressed and wanted to end it all and he says, "OK, I'll call the little man in Fulham and we'll fix the funeral." She laughed. Cruel humour was the only way to move her. That was their bond. Kindness didn't work. And that seems to explain such a lot about the man that is before me. Even though much of the show is devoted to the divorce from Eichelberger, the woman that haunts me as I was watching it is his mother.

We have met at the bar of his hotel for drinks and wheat free tapas. The room has platinum blonde wood floors and crystal chandeliers. He looks impressively handsome. Clear skin and super-expressive eyes. He's wearing a pale blue soft thick wool jumper, jeans and bare feet.

He gets right down effortlessly and quickly to talk about his relaitonships with women. He says they've all been about his mother. "I think all my wives and girlfriends have had aspects similar to my mother. I don't think there's any question about that. It's probably inevitable." Inevitable for one who's read so much Freud, Jung and other therapists, but more of that later.
His current girlfriend is 39-year-old sculpted blonde jewellery designer Jennifer Wade. I watch them together over the weekend I spend in their company and their relationship is unexpectedly sweet. They are sweet with one another and on one another. You catch odd moments where they seem lost in their own world and then rejoin the group chatter. He seems very comfortable with her and I doubt that comfortable is what he has enjoyed in many relationships with women.

She seems to be very nurturing of him, very protective, often expressing concerns for his knee. He recently had a knee transplant operation and some of the moves on stage have set off pain. When he's in one place he has a yoga instructor and an exercise regime. But when as he's been on tour it's been difficult. There has been no yoga instructor and the hotels have had swimming pools the size of a coffee cup. He stretches his leg out, wiggling the long toes. I'm on an armchair on one side of him, Wade on the other wearing skinny jeans and boots.

He met Wade last year, first of all in London and then by chance they were both in San Francisco where he had an apartment and she had a brother. Things moved very fast. He now wears a rose gold ring on his finger. He tells me, "She said how can I take you seriously? So I told her to design me a ring and I would wear it. I've never worn a ring before."
She is also wearing a rose gold ring that he bought her. It's a thick mesh band with tiny leaves hanging off it. Later on when she's not there I ask him is he going to get married? "I have no idea," he says. But then he laughs naughtily. "Jenny is just getting over the final stages of a difficult divorce that was painful for both people and I don't think she is thinking beyond that now." Cleese himself doesn't seem at all reticent.

When I point out that his divorce was also difficult he says, "Well, not emotionally because it was not a relationship that I had been getting a great deal out of for quite a long time. And when I took the courage to say I don't want to go on with this it was painful for Alyce, which was why it was difficult. But the fact was I wasn't particularly happy and you reach a certain point in your life where you think am I going to go on not being happy just to keep someone else unruffled? Or am I going to take the risk and push forward? I don't regret it I'm afraid at all. I don't regret what happened."
It's been written that he was suicidal about the break-up, about the failure of this marriage. So was he really incredibly depressed at first? "I was not suicidal at all. It was a great relief. The trouble is journalists make stuff up and then it keeps being recycled. What is true is that I was very sad about the death of my friend David Hatch. It had nothing to do with the divorce." Hatch was a life long friend. They met at Cambridge when they were in the Cambridge Footlights together. Sir David Hatch became managing director of BBC Radio and died in 2007.

Cleese is very keen to set the record straight that he was not suicidal about the divorce. He seems to have attracted all kinds of untrue stories that recycle around him. Most recently it was written that he was now pretending to like German culture. "I've always been attracted to German culture. I've spoken about it many times, and made the point when Basil Fawlty is goose stepping it's not making fun of the Germans it's making fun of Basil. In fact I had a dream five years ago in which I said to someone that my only regret in life was that German was not my first language. I realised afterwards that the five books I had been reading were all written in German including Freud, Jung and Schopenhauer."
I tell him I've read another story that he'd spent several thousands on having cosmetic work done. "Oh," he says helpfully. "That story ran because this poor little girl Barbie, who I had a very brief relationship with that lasted seven or eight days, did an interview with a newspaper. They rang her and pretended to be interested in her career. She started saying a whole lot of stuff…"

What's interesting and so supremely gentlemanly is that he doesn't say a bad word about the twentysomething who sold stories on him. He feels she was tricked. He's not angry but affectionate towards her. And what's even more accommodating is that he goes on to say "Everyone knows I've had several hair transplants. The first one was in 1978 and I have far worse teeth than Martin Amis, horrible teeth. I don't have a tooth left in my head and I haven't had one for 25 years. Everything is crowned or bridged. I had the whole thing reconstructed about three years ago." He tells me how sorry he felt for the dentist who couldn't fail to notice a tear rolling down his face with the pain.
Was the hair transplant painful? "No, the whole thing lasts an hour and a half and you have hair for the rest of your life. It used to look a bit cabbage patchy, but now it's all filled in. some people have a great shaped skull. Mine is pointed and I look better in hair."

I love the fact we can talk so openly and without any kind of embarrassment about teeth and hair and wives and mothers. That's the one thing years of therapy has not let him get over, his need to be so blissfully accommodating.
He doesn't seem remotely tired after his two hours on stage, but his knee is hurting from when he acted out how Graham Chapman used to go around on his hands and knees at cocktail parties biting people like a dog. It hurts him every night but he doesn't cut it out of the show. Chapman was one of the original Pythons, but extremely wild and an alcoholic. He died in 1989.
The next morning he is up early and we talk over non-dairy cappuccinos. It's cold and bright and I have been thinking more about his relationship with therapy. He's always been fascinated by it. Perhaps one of the most fascinating therapists of all was Robin Skynner (psychotherapist and bomber pilot) with whom he wrote a seminal book, Families And How To Survive Them. I say seminal because I've given it to many people in crisis and it's helped them understand why they chose the person/life/thing that now was driving them demented. I used to use it as character reference background to all my interviewees. For instance a youngest child, a middle child, an older child, and an only child all come with very different sets of problems and perspectives. He and Skynner wrote the book together. "Robin used to use the phrase we finish up teaching what we most need to learn ourselves."

Immersing himself in therapy did not stop him from having a similar relationship over and over again with a different person. "I think there's definitely a tendency to go for the same type of person again and again. I remember reading in John Mortimer's autobiography that he was constantly in his office with couples who were about to get divorced and they were immediately getting married to somebody who seemed exactly like the one they were divorcing. And that was a lawyer with very little interest perhaps in psychology.
"I saw a therapist in Santa Barbara who told me that if you have a highly neurotic mother, that when you meet someone who most people say woops, back away, this one is neurotic, you think nothing of it after what you've been through with your mother. So instead of seeing it as a danger signal you think it's something you can cope with, and because it's familiar you are drawn to it. There is a feeling that one is drawn back to the original experience of when you tried to make your mother happy and failed so you will try to find someone else who is a bit like your mum and make them happy. So there's repetition."

Another therapist in San Francisco called John Pentland - he ran the Gurdjieff Movements in America, told him 'We are not united people. We are lots of different people in the same skin and a particular stimulus will bring one of our personalities forward. For instance you'd be different to the Queen to how you are with an ex-lover. And we are all trying to seek unity.' And I think this underlies a lot of the sacred traditions. A lot of Christ's teaching is about this. The parables are really about different aspects of ourselves that have to be reconciled if we are to have any unity as human beings."

We talk enthusiastically about different therapists and therapies. Cleese is a wonderful teacher because his mind is ordered and precise and he's very non-judgmental, and he always wants to answer questions precisely, enjoying truth and revelation rather than fear of it. Although one suspects that is precisely because at one point in his life he did fear revelation.
And what was he looking for in all the many, many therapists he's seen? "A number of things. I think affection is incredibly important. It brings out the best in us and it relaxes us." He doesn't mean he was looking for affection from the therapists. He was wanting to understand how affection works. These days Cleese seems a very warm affectionate person, but it's something he's worked on.

"Yes, but I had to learn it and because at public school if you put your arm around someone you're immediately thought to be homosexual and beyond redemption. I remember at college there was an American exchange student. He came to Clifton College for a year on exchange and we had a cricket match at the end of term. After we'd finished he came into the changing room to say goodbye and said 'I don't know if we'll ever see each other again' and he gave me a hug and I remember being very shocked at being hugged by another man. I think touch is very important to human beings."
Cleese these days is eminently touchable and touching. His mother of course was not so comfortable with it, but his father "was very physically affectionate. He was a kind man."
I remember reading that his father was such a kind person he was shocked to find that the world was not so kind and the contrast was acute. "I don't remember saying that but I would say it's a bit of a shock to realise the world is a much worse place than I ever thought when I was young. Which is why my next show that I'm working on is called Why There Is No Hope and that we are run by power seekers." He intends it to be a comedy. Once again finding release in all things dark.
He's also just finished writing a stage version of A Fish Called Wanda with his daughter Camilla. He's getting round to translating a Feydeau farce for the stage and writing his autobiography and presenting a TV show about history with Matthew D'Ancona.

Wanda may well turn out to be a musical. More interesting than the project itself was working with Camilla. "Once I thought I would be doing it with Camilla it became much more exciting. She's come up with some great ideas. We are very similar. She was brought up in America because her mother is American."
He is very close to Camilla now but again had to seek the help of a therapist because she had problems with alcohol addiction and he had to give her a deadline that unless she sought help herself he wouldn't be able to help her. I don't think the tough love concept came easily to him and he's extremely proud of Camilla now he tells me quite a few times.

Camilla is the daughter of his second wife Barbara Trentham, an actress he married in 1981 after splitting from his first wife of ten years, co-writer and co-star of Fawlty Towers, Connie Booth a few years before. He has another daughter, Cynthia, who is also a scriptwriter from his marriage to Booth. From what I've heard and read, the daughters did not get on with Eichelberger. And they must be further irritated that she has severely diminished their inheritance.
Talking about his daughters leads back to talking about his mother. "If I took Cynthia down to see my mother in Weston-Super-Mare my mother resented the fact that the child was there because it meant she got less attention from me. I have a history of being rather placatory with women. If you have a mother who is very selfish and you don't get much attention from her it sends you the message that you're not worth it. And also that you're not entitled to look after yourself, so you spend a whole lot of time servicing other people, making sure they don't get cross."

I do find it strange that he went into therapy to try and save the marriage with Eichelberger when she seems such an emotional vampire. "It's because I had become placatory." He says the word with special contempt.
Has she seen any of the show? "No. She always said that if we broke up we would never speak again and that turned out very well. I never took it seriously at the time but from the day we broke up and I called her to say you know the reputation of this lawyer you have hired…" He pauses just for a second as if he's remembering the very moment where he knew there was no return. The lawyer had a fierce reputation. "That was the last and only time we spoke."

He says that he is on good terms with one of her sons who is a vet in Hong Kong and with the other there has been silence. Not so good for a therapist who specialised in family relations. "She was always very much on about the importance of family and now the family has pretty much broken up. You know her boys, my daughters, their sisters…" If he is said about the break-up of family it is the only thing he's sad about. Perhaps he regrets more that he stayed in the marriage so long. That he stayed placatory. For placatory read shackled, suppressed, diminished and without affection.
"I think I have a confidence now that I didn't have before. It's come in the last three or four years and I don't know why it's come."
It seems a few forces have converged. The divorce was so expensive. He had to let a lot of stuff go materialistically and emotionally. He was able to reinvent who he is. There's a certain freedom in that.

"That's true. It's very beneficial to reinvent yourself because you fall into patterns which aren't relevant any more. There's a lot of research gone on into ageing saying that you age according to your internal idea of what age means. Age means nothing to me now. I mean it means stuff when my body starts to let me down…"
What he means is he doesn't feel old, he doesn't feel trapped, he doesn't feel that his ideas are tired, and he feels a new person with Wade. He looks after himself more, no wheat, no dairy, lots of vitamin pills, but more importantly "I laugh with Jenny in a way I haven't since I was ten. It's the utterly hopeless laughter of the ten-year-old and it's wonderful to have that back." He says that savouring the sentence.

What does he think is different about his relationship with Wade to his previous two wives? "It is that I was far too left brain about it all. In the past I was more ticking boxes, not having an immediate being in love thing which I did have with Connie." Wives number three and four seem to be relationships that should have worked logically but didn't. With Wade he says there was an instant connection similar to the one he had with his first wife. "Connie and I are great pals and I have enormous affection for her husband John Lahr."
He talks about Booth both on and off stage with great fondness. There are no left over irritations detectable. They met in 1964 and got married in 1968. They wrote Fawlty Towers together. Everything seemed perfect. What went wrong?

"I think we found it difficult. Neither of us were emotionally mature. There was a great deal of love between us. Breaking up was very very painful. I was depressed about it for two years but I think it was the right decision. It didn't quite work."
I wonder was it too much living and working together? Did they argue? "I don't quite remember. I'm sure we must have been arguing because if things aren't right you do argue. It wasn't nasty. We always functioned well together when we were writing together. Even the best relationships go through difficult periods. It's not the world you read about in the tabloids. People fighting like cats and dogs or blissfully happy. I was very sad for two years and I don't think I improved my choosing process when I met Barbara. And when I met Alyce I thought it seemed appropriate. But Alyce changed and I'm sure she feels that I changed too. Jenny is different to both of these women. With Barbara we had a fairly turbulent relationship because we married rather quickly and the turbulence followed."

He never wore a ring with either of them. "Jenny is a jeweller, so I said why don't you make me a little ring. In Weston-Super-Mare rings and after shave were considered as poofy and narcissistic."
There are many references to Weston-Super-Mare, he both has a constant need to embrace it and escape it at the same time. He talks about one of the last times he went back there. His mother and Robin Skynner were both gravely ill at the same time and would die within weeks of each other.
"It was the summer of 2000 and I was going to spend a week with Robin who was ill and then a week with my mother, but my mother became seriously ill and I spent the whole two weeks with her. I knew Robin was not long for this planet, so I left my mother. I was only able to have lunch with Robin. Then my mother went into a coma so I went back down. Robin died without me spending proper time with him. My mother always needed my attention."

He tells this story with great sadness, but not with any anger or bitterness. We talk some more about Skynner and his family systems exercise - a group of people are in a room and they walk round and choose one other person on the basis that they remind them of someone in their family or someone that they'd like to have in their family. They sit down and find that they have a similar emotional history. The theory is you choose partners because you automatically identify with their neurosis even if you don't see them straight away.

"There were times when I thought I would love to have had a sister because I found my mother's behaviour so extraordinary. I would love to have said what the hell is this about?" As an only child he had no one to share with. He had to take the full responsibility for himself and share it all with an audience many years later. His mother was 40 and his father 46 when he was born and was constantly reminded by his mother that they had never planned to have children. His mother would tell him that he was a mistake.

"My father was in the war and after that he thought only in terms of getting steady jobs. At school he made me sad if I became enthused about chess or fencing. He never took that spontaneous enthusiasm for something very seriously." Perhaps that was after being in the First World War he didn't want to do anything risky again. He must have seen so many people die. "I remember him talking about being in the trenches and the man next to him being shot saying it was just like Private Ryan and the man next to him was crying for his mother. It's extraordinary Chrissy. I remember thinking, why would he cry for her?" He's laughing but he means it.

"I was a good boy really." He had an outlet for really bad behaviour on stage. "Yes, that's true. I can say almost anything to audiences and get away with it." This comes as a direct result of what he could and couldn't get away with with his mother.
The previous night he told about a sketch he did with Chapman. Chapman was the undertaker. "I said to him my mother's dead and I don't know what to do. He said, 'No problem squire. We can burn her, bury her or dump her' and I said what do you mean dump her and he said 'put her in the Thames or a skip.' And I said no, no, let's do it properly and I pull out a sack that has the body in it and Graham says 'I think we've got an eater' and I say are you seriously suggesting I eat my mother. Long pause. 'Not raw. Cooked'. Then I say I'm a bit peckish but I'm not going to eat mum. And he said 'tell you what. Let's eat her neck and if you feel guilty afterwards you'll vomit and then we'll bury the vomit'."

I enjoyed the story because it explains so much of Cleese. There are so many metaphors involved in that one sketch. He's still vomiting up his mother and being nurtured by the laughter. Finally he's with an un-neurotic woman who is nothing like his mother and he's really happy and grateful to have escaped her.
He says he's not doing the tour and working so hard just for money even though he needed to acquire some to pay the hefty divorce demands. "I am not super money conscious. I just want to check that I'm not going to run out. I've always been easy come easy go. Before I married Alyce I had one house in London and no mortgage. And after a few years of marriage we had seven properties and I was racing around spending all my earnings servicing properties. I can simplify my life now once I've got Alyce's payment out of the way I can live in a much smaller way."

He is not planning on returning to Britain full-time. "I don't want to go through another English winter. It takes years off your life. I get terrible chest infections and the grey skies make me so gloomy. The sunshine picks me up. Rather than California I might try the Caribbean. Balminess is what I seek." He's less enamoured with California these days. It's gloomier these days because there's a recession going on.

What is his greatest extravagance? "Probably food. Not necessarily incredibly expensive restaurants. A good Indian or a good Chinese will do. I just think food is such an extraordinary pleasure." What makes him happy? "A day off. Reading a book. And Jenny's company. I might take a little exercise. Go for a walk with Jenny. I always felt that I had to make everyone else alright before I could get on with my life, and Jenny is like that, almost to a fault. She spends an inordinate amount of time worrying about other people."

He doesn't know how it's happened. It seems not through therapy, more by coincidence, if such a thing exists, that finally he's got someone who worries about him and he's very much enjoying it. It seems to make him enjoy everything else more.
Is he nervous of going on stage? "Not any more. Not really. It's more a question of energy, not so much fear. The audience have bought tickets. They wall want to see me. You get a warm welcome…

"For the first three quarters of my professional life I was much more concerned not to be bad than I was to be good. And I did most of my best work under that feeling."
In the show he talks about all the good work that he's done ending when he did Wanda at 50. After that it didn't really matter. Does he really think that? "The three outstanding things I've done in my life were all before 50. It's a kind of joke, but there was a time when I was racing around doing all the jobs that were offered to me because of my need for high earnings…"

He smiles knowing that his life is simpler and happier and he will only do the work that he enjoys. But best of all he doesn't hope that he won't be bad. He knows he'll be pretty good.

At the Golden Globes and other awards ceremonies that have been precursor to the Oscars, director David Fincher thanked the cast of Social Network, particularly "invisible Josh."
Josh Pence plays one of the Winklevoss twins; Tyler, the one who wasn't Armie Hammer. For the longest time everyone assumed it was Hammer playing both parts, but in fact a huge part of the budget went on CGI to put Hammer's face on Pence's rather fine body.
Pence was not a body double, although their bodies are both a matching athletic 6' 5". Pence is probably the only actor in the history of celluloid who is in an Oscar nominated movie and on screen for a large chunk of that movie, but remains a faceless secret.
We meet at Soho House LA. I recognised him instantly because he's 6'5", 28, and not unlike Armie Hammer, but perhaps better looking. At one point there was a thought to cast them as fraternal twins, but in real life the Winklevosses are identical. It could have gone the other way and been his face on Hammer's body, but it didn't.
Perhaps, I offer, the story is more intriguing because of his facelessness. He smiles, "I think that's a very kind way of putting it. Armie's experience was more than mine, but as far as the characters are concerned I would argue that I was more right for the part. I went to Dartmouth with those types of kids." Dartmouth is another Ivy League college like Harvard which was the setting for The Social Network and where Facebook had its naissance. It's a place of piercing ambition, betrayal, rivalry, which has obviously resonated across the world.
Pence also used to be a rower like the Winklevoss twins. "Armie's background was closer to the Winklevosses than mine." Meaning they were very rich. Pence's parents were not in that kind of super league. They owned a farm in southern California where he grew up. "I was around those types of kids at school like the Winklevosses. Being around money makes people carry themselves in a certain way. Armie has that kind of aura about him. I was raised to be humble and never call attention to yourself - that's already an impediment because of the profession I've chosen. It's all about asking for the spotlight. Perhaps that part of me is innate. Perhaps I don't want to be famous. And perhaps I like the fact I'm invisible. Easier to slip into the skin of someone else."
Perhaps it's this psychological make-up that made him OK to be the faceless twin. Or perhaps he's putting a brave invisible face on it. "I'm not going to sit here and bullshit you. Of course I want recognition. I don't want to be invisible Josh for the rest of my life. But I am grateful for this experience. It has changed my life already. Working with Aaron Salkind and David Fincher on a movie that is so topical… perhaps it just wasn't my time. There were days when I was convinced it was. And of course I was envious of Armie, but he's a nice guy and we were working together for 10 months so you may as well get on with him."
They were all cast in September 2009. They read for both parts together. "At the fourth audition my agent said 'the good news is you're going to read for Fincher. The bad news is only one face will be used.' They didn't explain the process but they said you will not be recognisable in the film. The only thing that prevented me from saying yes was my ego… great art is a collaboration, isn't it. And every day we worked on making Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss their own person. David Fincher is a class act. I was always treated very well. I created a character. I bust my ass. We worked on the rapport between the two of us. By the end of the movie Armie and I were finishing each other's sentences. Fincher gave me the space to be an actor, not just a body double, which is how I see myself referred to," he says stoically.
The process of the face replacement is described in the documentary about the making of The Social Network. Pence is featured in this almost as much as Oscar nominated Jesse Eisenberg because he's extremely articulate, funny and comes over with huge charisma.
What was it like for him to turn up on a red carpet and nobody knows who you are ? How will he feel about being invisible Josh at the Oscars ?
A sigh, " There's no book on how to handle this. You just have to rearrange your instincts and align them with our ultimate priority, which is to keep working. If you do that eventually you'll be recognised for said work."
To make matters worse here are very few pictures of him that show up on Google. Mario Testino shot him when he was a model with Giselle. There's an amusing one of him wearing Giselle's bikini. "On the first day I came on set we would have our pictures by our names and the AD as a joke put this up on a poster board. He was arranging where everyone was going to be seated in the scene we were shooting that day. Everyone had head shots and there was me in Giselle's bikini bottoms."
So much for not wanting to call attention to himself! If that had really been the case he might have stayed on Wall Street. He studied economics at Dartmouth and planned a career in finance. "I was bored to tears. You only get one life.
"The Social Network? I looked on at as a great opportunity and not be judged. I rowed for four years in high school. My team went to Henley without me because my back was wrecked. The entire time I was training for this movie I knew I was doing some damage, but I didn't wan to get off the job. I didn't want to ask for a masseuse. I wanted to see it through."
And it's exactly with this attitude, intelligence and a face you really want to look at that will mean Josh Pence will not be invisible for long.

My first sight of Kimberley Walsh at the Fabulous photo shoot is of her looking like a 1950s swimwear goddess. I am gasping at how glamorous, how effortlessly hourglass her figure is. I'm in awe. Kimberley has a faltering smile. And she is precariously placing a shawl at her hips while she is wondering what angle the camera is coming from.

She tells me, "I've got extreme proportions." Her way of saying tiny waist and J.Lo bum. In the year off from Girls Aloud, where each band member has dedicated herself to solo projects, Kimberley is venturing into television presenting. She's just made a documentary about jeans; part the history of denim and its cowboy origins; and part jean designers and how they frustrate us."How traumatic is jean shopping. It's as if it's designed to make us feel bad about ourselves. You know what size you are, but it doesn't work with jeans. If I do a skinny jean I have to go a size bigger, and high-waisted ones I might be two sizes smaller. Does anyone else find it a painful experience or am I out there on my own."

I tell her I've cried jean shopping. Kimberley is the Girls Aloud band member who has always been one of us. Down to earth, straightforward, girls' girl, womanly woman, Yorkshire lass. "I've cried too, in vile changing rooms with horrible light. A lot of the designers we talked said you're going to have to expect to try on a lot of jeans. But I don't think people do expect that, trying on 20 pairs before they find one. Many designers base jeans on a size 4-6 perfectly proportioned human being. And there are not many of them out there.

Everyone has got a bulge, whether it's love handles or a bigger bum."As soon as you get to a 10, 12, 14, 16, you are not going to be perfectly proportioned, so it's no wonder they don't fit. For me they are either gaping at the top or too tight in the leg, so I'm on a quest."Outside of jeans is she comfortable with her shape? "I'm happy with my waist, it's small so you can accentuate it. My legs are my least favourite. I'm comfortable in figure hugging clothes. I'm a woman; I may as well make the most of it. If you try to hide it with baggy clothes it makes you look bigger."Did you have a body crisis when you first started seeing yourself on TV? "Yes, you do have the harsh reality that you look bigger on TV.

That's a fact. It's annoying. I've never gone to extremes in trying to lose weight. I've never gone to that extreme place in my head, but I have been through phases of thinking I've got a video coming up, I need to lose weight."I sometimes do the Davina DVD, especially if my sister stays with me. I like walking, and if I'm training I won't eat badly, just because you get in the zone."Recently she did a three-mile walk in heels for breast cancer to raise money for Breast Cancer Haven, a therapy centre that cared for her close friend and dance teacher mentor Deana Morgan, who survived breast cancer. "We had to make the heels high or it wasn't hard enough. I was still in pain walking three miles in heels. But it was nothing compared to Kilimanjaro. That was very hard. Cheryl and I both hated that. We were lucky to have each other." Cheryl told me "it was just horrible" and that she did it "because Kimberley wanted to do it."

"I felt I couldn't justify saying no to it, but it was not me at all. Friends I'd known from when I was five said, 'You cannot be serious.' They reminded me I used to hide when it was cross training to get out of it."Cheryl and I were lucky to have each other. To be with someone you're really close to when you're doing something like that makes it a lot easier." There is no doubt that she and Cheryl are really close. Perhaps the closest of all the band members. "Everyone is still in touch, although we don't see each other that much because we are all really busy, which is strange. We text all the time, and if anyone is doing anything exciting we are there to support them. We are still on our year break. The last thing we did together was the Coldplay tour last September. Soon we'll have discussions about when we should start recording.

Nicola is doing her own make-up range designed for pale skin."Nadine has been in LA for three years, so we don't see as much of her unless we have work on. She's got her solo album coming, and the time difference means she is asleep when we are awake, so it's not as easy to be in touch with her."What about the rumours that Nadine doesn't want to do the next album? "That's not the case. I've heard nothing from her to suggest that. We were all getting on really well when we finished the tour."We've been together seven years so we know each other really well, and it helps when you know what each other's about. We never have actual arguments. It's not like that. We have disagreements if we've got different opinions of things we're going to do with the show. Other than that it's a very easy going atmosphere."Me and Nicola are both really close to Cheryl.

Nicola used to live with her in the very beginning, and then Cheryl moved near me and we became closer." Kimberley lived in the same building complex where they used to go to the gym together and run into Ashley Cole together. Over the year Kimberley and boyfriend Justin Scott and Cheryl and Ashley used to go on double dates. Has she seen Ashley recently? "No, I haven't," Kimberley says. A face that normally expresses everything to the full is blank. She says it without malice or regret. I ask her if Cheryl's OK. "I don't want to talk about it because we're really close. I wouldn't talk about any of my friends in that way. I'd rather not talk about her. Obviously we do talk. I talk to her about whatever stuff I've got going on…" It's clear from her reply that Kimberley cares about her a lot and is completely loyal and would never betray any confidences which although it's miserable for an interview, it's actually comforting to know that level of loyalty exists. Yet she's happy to talk about her own vulnerable areas. "Around our second album the producer said we should all go to the gym in the morning before we came to the studio. It did not go down well. It was his way of trying to tell us with gentle persuasion that he obviously thought we needed it. But we were like, if we want to go we'll go." Had you all put on weight? "We must have done. We were all unfit because we'd had a big break.

That was the only time all of us trained together and none of us wanted to be there." Have you ever been reduced to tears by feeling too fat? "I'd say I've been filled up and on the brink at times in my life, but hasn't everybody? If you are getting ready to go out and you're feeling a bit fat and nothing fits and you are throwing things around your room and you just want to wear a bin bag…" That's the thing about Kimberley, and that's why she'll make a great TV presenter, she can identify with everyone and everyone with her. "I don't really get like that now. Maybe I like myself more. "There is nothing I would consider cosmetically changing about my body. I'm a wuss and I'd be scared of general anaesthetic." Do you still sleep covered in pots of cream?

"Yes, I always put on loads of moisturizer before I go to bed. I don't think it's too much because it's always soaked in by the morning. I've always done that since being very young." Have you felt feel under more pressure since being in Girls Aloud?"Yes, because we are role models, and there's nothing we can do about that. We are and it's a hard thing to take on because I'm only human. If I make mistakes I hope people will forgive me or learn by them because I can't put pressure on myself." That said, I think she can't help but put pressure on herself. She's a bit of a perfectionist and a bit of a worrier. "I'm enjoying the presenting, but I'm still learning. I'm presenting a few of the Five O'Clock Shows that are are replacing Paul O'Grady.

We'll just have to see how that goes…. "Sarah is doing her acting. I saw her at Cheryl's gig and she was just talking, talking, talking. I don't really know exactly what she's doing." Do you think Sarah's reputation as a party animal is justified? "There's a phase she went through where she was going out a lot. Now she lives in Buckinghamshire she's quite a homebody, she stays in a lot. At one time she was fine with that reputation because she was out a lot and enjoying it. But now, even if she goes out once a month and she looks like she's having a really good night, then that's what will be picked up on." Were the band really worried last year when they discovered they had a deranged fantasist who posted an essay online about the sexual torture and mutilation of each band member. Darryn Walker, a 35-year- old civil servant was brought to trial, but the case was dropped. "I didn't like that. I found it very disturbing and weird that they can be thinking about you in so much detail.

"When I was presenting BBC Switch awards I was watching JLS. The girls were going mental, lifting their tops up, throwing items of clothing on stage. It's not the same for a girl band. Boys wouldn't do that and we wouldn't play up to it. Most of our male followers are gay." Is it true you pretend to be Beyoncé to get over stage fright? "In my head when I first walk out I am pretending to be her for the first five minutes. I do love her. She's a good alter ego for me to have. She's an amazing performer and I've always thought it was good that there are these people, like her and Jennifer Lopez, who have a similar body shape, especially when you've been looking at Kate Moss all your life. It made me feel better that there are attractive women the same shape. I'm not comparing myself to those two, but you can aspire. And you can also look at them to see what things to wear." Kimberley is very easy to talk to, straightforward and open. She never makes you feel that she has a big celebrity life. She's never grand. Even when you ask her questions about Justin, like are you ever going to get married, questions that she's been asked a million times before, she doesn't lose patience. "Do you know we are a bit sick of being asked that. It's become more of a thing for other people than for us. When the tie feels right it will happen. Or it might not. Maybe we'll continue as we are. If it's not broke don't fix it. People around us are putting pressure on us because they feel they are ready for a nice wedding, and I'm not going to be pressured into make it happen. We both we're in it for the long haul. We've been together seven years and withstood a lot already. We live together, we've got loads of commitments together." Did your parents breaking up when you were six have an effect on your attitude to marriage? "Definitely. It makes a difference to me.

I look at Justin's mum and dad who are really happy together and I think it's amazing. But my parents did not stand the test of time, and it makes you think a lot more about making that commitment. "After seven years there's nothing I don't know about him, nor him about me. But it's scarier for some reason when you've seen it not work, and I would like it to work. I would like to think I could have a family and stay together because that's what I didn't have." She's very close to both her older and younger sisters who are both actors. Her older sister has just had a small role in Coronation Street. Her brother is now an events manager, but they all went to the same stage school and "any opportunity we got we would be dancing and singing. There are two years between each of us. My mum is a music teacher and my dad used to play in a band, so we were like the Von Trapps. I don't remember much at the time of my parents being together. For me it was normal for them to be apart." Are you thinking of babies any time soon?

"I'm always broody. I love babies, but I'm not quite ready. My friend's pregnant and my sister's thinking about it, so I'll have babies all around me and I'd definitely like to have a lot of children." Justin already has a little girl, Chloe. How was it coming into a relationship where he was already a daddy? "In the beginning I thought I might have issues with him having a child, thinking his first experience of that role is not going to be with me. But when I saw him with her and saw what a good dad he is, it actually made him more attractive, because I know he's going to be amazing, and it made me love him more."

Has your relationship changed much over the years? "I sometimes think we've morphed into one another in the things we say. He'll come out with the odd northern phrase (he's from Bristol) and he'll say what have you done to me. The relationship still feels quite fresh, yet there's a security there and an understanding." When you met him did you know he was the one? "Not really, because I'm a bit of a sceptic. I've been in love before, so I thought it could be another of those.

I didn't think too far ahead. I didn't think it would last because I was all swept away. We met because he was signed to the same record label (in a band called Triple 8). We'd see them around at gigs, and we just clicked. I remember thinking, he really gets me. But he's been brought up in Bristol with his family setup and I've been in Bradford with mine, but for some reason we can totally get each other. He would say the things I was thinking." Was there a change in the dynamic of the relationship as you became more successful? "I can see how it wouldn't be easy for some people to deal with what he had to deal with, but he's really chilled out and secure in himself.

If he does feel bad about it he never shows it, so it never interferes with the relationship. "I'm a bit of a worrier and he puts things in perspective for me. He'll say, 'Babe, I am not going to listen to you worrying. He'll cut me down, but I think sometimes you need it. I don't know how he can be so chilled out. He'll go to bed and be asleep in seconds." How do you deal with separations? "We're fine with it. We've always had it. Because of his little girl Chloe he's always had to go home. We do miss each other and it's nice when we see each other. When I did the documentary (Jeans Evolution for Sky1) I only spoke to him a few times. When you are with someone a lot you don't think you're going to feel excited to see them, you think you're over it. So when you do have a bit of a flutter it's nice. We don't really have big rows. We have arguments. They used to escalate into bigger arguments. But neither of us wants that, so we've learnt how to cut it short. Although he's more stubborn than me.

I want to be over it straight away like everything's fine. But he's give me a minute. I can let things go and be the bigger person. When you're younger I think you can get into the entertainment of the drama of it all. But now it's knowing where it could end up. It makes me bite my tongue. Otherwise I don't want it to be me who says the thing that goes too far, who is too cutting. You have won the argument but you'll be the one that ends up feeling bad." On the whole she seems that she's a very good girlfriend. Never forgets a birthday and always tries to be supportive. "I'm sure I've got my bad points and if he was here I'm sure he'd list them. I'm thoughtful. If I see something he'll like I'll get it. We don't really buy things for each other, but we do things for each other. He does the handiwork side of things in the house. I'll mostly do washing, but we both cook. The other day we both painted the garden furniture." Does she have a super tidy house? "I do a level of OCD. I'm a neat and tidy freak.

I don't know where it comes from, but I like things to be tidied and organised, it makes me feel better, and I have to know that things are switched off. If you line things up one way and somebody moves it I have to move them back. Justin does it to annoy me. I'm easing off a little bit because my poor children won't have much fun if I stay like this." Her broodiness was piqued when she went to Uganda for Comic Relief and did a film in a maternity ward to see how the cash she raised from the Kilimanjaro climb was being spent. There were 20 women in a tiny room with their babies; life expectancy not great. "I don't break down easily, but as soon as I walked in I had this overwhelming feeling of the sadness of their circumstance; the parallel worlds. Of course I felt like I wanted to bring some babies home, but I couldn't seriously consider it because you want to help everybody. That's what's so frustrating. I felt we were trying to help, but it was all hard to bear. I can still remember so many faces and it just resonates and plays on my mind."

Kimberley is a mixture of strong and soppy. Has she found that her years of fame has made her more or less trusting? "I've got more wary of people since being in the group because of the industry. I don't trust as easily, which is a healthy thing. It's good that I'm more on it now. But I do trust Justin. I haven't got any reason not to, so until then I'm going to be this trusting person. I couldn't be in a relationship where I didn't trust somebody. It would turn me into somebody I don't want to be. I've seen it and in the past, in other relationships, I've been slightly more aware of it. But you've got to trust each other and don't let it eat away. Just keep going as we are and hope that it continues." She could be talking about Girls Aloud because whatever's happened, whoever's let them down or betrayed them, they clearly all have each other. And that friendship will always keep going.

Kylie Minogue. Sunday Times Magazine, June 13, 2010. At the end of my last meeting with Kylie I walk away with the feeling that I know her. Not just as a result of many interviews over time but because she allowed herself to be known. Something that's new for her. In the past she didn't really want people to get her. These days she's friends with vulnerability; sees its point, its strength even. Before, certainly before cancer, and even coming out of it she didn't want to be known. That was just too invasive. She was too shy. She is a mass of contradictions she never wanted people knowing her business, yet her business is show. The cancer stripped her, forced her to let people in, in a way that she had not welcomed before, because she's always been guarded, perfectionist, ambiguous. Comfortable being an equation in people's heads that was something like Neighbours, I Should Be So Lucky, Michael Hutchence, hot pants, Can't Get You Out Of My Head, cancer, survivor icon = Kylie. She's always been more comfortable hiding because she carried around longer than anyone else the image of Charlene the mechanic with the frizzy eighties hair. And she's far too proper a person to ever want to exploit anything that happened to her; be it heartbreak or cancer. She would never do a documentary humiliating a lover like Madonna did, or an interview wearing only fishnets and a bra like Gaga.

Gradually there was a point where she thought, probably not consciously, that it was OK to be herself. I talked to Stuart Price, who was the executive producer on Aphrodite, not released yet, but already the buzz is that it's her best album yet.

Price worked with Madonna on her Confessions On A Dancefloor album, so he knows his way around the pop diva. "Early on I said this should be 100 per cent you singing about the things that people had a feeling that went on for you in your life that you've never spoken about. It's good to reveal ups and downs on record and what she brought to the studio was a combination of joy, sadness confusion and put it on a record so that you can connect to what she's been through. Arrogance is not in her dictionary, but she stakes a claim in a way that is captivating and a way which shows that records are a truth serum."

The record shimmers in Kylieness. When we first meet she smells of Kylieness. Her own perfume Sweet Darling, musky and slinky. Like everything she does she throws herself totally into it. She'd never wear a perfume that bears her name that she doesn't wear. We are in Blakes Hotel. In exactly the same black lacquer room with orchids and Buddha's that we met in a year ago. She likes it there. It's old school stylish, covert.

She's wearing black skinny jeans, platform suede clogs with a silver flash, a silver top and black tight leather jacket, clear nail polish and make-up made up to look natural. Her eyes a pale sparkling blue. I stare at her face which is much less mannequin shiny. There's a couple of lines around the eyes and mouth. Her skin doesn't look like what you'd imagine the skin of a 42-year-old who has cancer but there are not many reference points for that. She's stopped doing botox. "It gave me a bad rap. Isn't that the same?" It did seem very unfair that Kylie survived cancer, strove to get back to herself, to look as good as she could, to find only that people complained she didn't look real.

"It fascinates me that I'm asked so much about it when advertising for face products is forced down our throats. There are some things you can do. Most people have done them. You can have microdermabrasions and micropeels. If these things are going to give you better skin why not."

The tabloids ran with a line that these days all she used was Pond's because her grandmother did. Is that your must have regime? "No. I use all different things. I'm always trying different things. I'm quite spoilt because a lot of products are sent to me. In Neighbours they used it to take your make-up off because Pond's dissolved everything. It takes me back to the smell of your grandma. I have used it because one day recently we were in the States and I ran out of cleanser and somebody had some Pond's, so I took my make-up off and it had a moisturizing effect. So that's the story of what's keeping me youthful.

"My face has gone through a lot of changes. If you look back to before I was ill there was nothing of me. I didn't realise it at the time but in a way I looked much older than I do now. All of me is just fleshier now, but my face changed. It filled out, it puffed up with the drugs. It's not puffed now but it was because of the chemotherapy and steroids. Nobody saw me much I was under the radar, but there are pictures of me. I could see from my peripheral vision my cheeks… I'd never noticed my cheeks before, but I could look down and I was like those are my cheeks.

" I tell her I remember the pictures of that time when she looked chic in a headscarf. "I try to keep it up just to lift my spirits if nothing else." By keeping it up she means appearance, façade, telling the world she was OK even if she wasn't. Do you feel that because you've been stripped bare you had less to lose and was less wary of people and more open? "I think I know what you're saying… I was pretty much laid bare. I was at the mercy of all those different specialists, doctors, hospitals, other hospitals.

" I Imagine what it must be like if you've always been a person who liked to keep a certain control in your life to have nothing. To go to a doctor when you were feeling terribly ill and be told there was nothing wrong with you. To misdiagnose your cancer. To go back and insist that they were wrong and then have other doctors tell you what to do. After that making a documentary where you allow people to see what goes on in your kitchen must seem a whole lot easier. "I didn't really want to do White Diamond, but Willy (William Baker) kind of got the better of me. But yes, I feel I can deal with that sort of thing now. But that whole getting back on stage and doing the Showgirl homecoming tour?" She wonders now not why she did it, but how she did it. "I can't afford to be stressed and the more I let go of the better. So you've just got to find cruising speed… but I was trying too hard and being way too hard on myself and carry along old baggage.

I still had those layers from where they were in the beginning. Those nagging thoughts; she can't do this, she can't do that. I was like I can do it. I'm so stressed by it, but just do it. The point is I'm easier on myself." I wonder though just how easy she is. Old habits she's always been a connoisseur of the perfect leopard print, and I haven't seen those spots changing too much. The album is euphoric. I've only listened to it on a computer stream which makes most things sound tinny and awful, but it still sounds great. She smiles when I tell her. Not a trace of smugness in that smile.

"I think the euphoria came when we brought Stuart Price on board. He's so delightful and I was so relaxed recording with him because we got on like a house on fire. We just did it on the studio mic (not a recording booth). I wasn't separated in another room. I felt confident with him. He allowed me to shine." This is something that Kylie always does; compliment other people, express gratitude. It's more than just politeness, it's who she is. Price told me he wanted to get "something new that you haven't heard from her before but at the same time it's so unmistakably her. "Kylie must have visited the majority of vocal booths in the world and we wanted to break that mould. We recorded it in the control room, speakers up, designated dancing zone.

Kylie is one of the most accomplished singers in pop music. She rarely sings a bum note." Was she confident working in that pared down way? "I love having the challenge and I loved having Stuart." While Britain was gripped in the post-election standoff, only one thing could knock politics off the front pages, and that was Kylie's bum. Wearing hotpants taken at a video shoot for the single All The Lovers She laughs, "I was not expecting to be wearing that kind of outfit ever again. In fact the brief for the video, pardon the pun, was long flowing dresses. But when I got there the director said 'I think of you and I think hotpants.' I was thinking everyone's gone to so much trouble to call in white flowing dresses and I had to wrestle with my feelings about it and then I thought that the long dresses wouldn't work for this video, so I would go with it, but some paparazzi were outside and that's how those shots happened. But I survived." More than survived. It was a celebration.

She looks falteringly and says, "Now it gets written about because I'm in that age group 'she's in her forties and she's still got it.' I'm suddenly in that age range where you're spoken about like that, and I'm like shut up because at some point it won't be." I recognise this Kylie. The Kylie that's super hard on herself. That doesn't think she looks as great as everybody else thinks she does. As gorgeous as she really does. I remember when we met just after she was in remission. She was really hard on herself, coming to terms with her fuller face and noticing changes in her body, feeling grateful to be alive but finding her new body hard to confront because she lost a lot of weight then put on a lot of weight, and for someone who has been pretty much tiny all her life it came as a shock. She's still tiny, but she notices more that she's not as tiny as she was. "It has changed a lot and I still have to deal with it." In what way do you feel it's changed?

"Well, I'm here and that's what I have to remember when I start to get down about it. I still take medication, and there's a lot of women who stop taking the medication because they just can't stand the side effects. You definitely put on weight." I tell her again she doesn't look like she's gained weight. "But I notice it. Weight was never an issue for me. Before I could just eat anything." But everyone feels that. Metabolism slows down after a certain age. "Well it does but it's hard for me to tell what exactly it is because it's over five years that I've been on medication. I have just under a year until I get my five year clear." And after that you stop taking medication? "After that yeh. When I think back now going on that Homecoming tour I just can't believe I did that. I get upset thinking about it." I wonder exactly what she gets upset about.

That she forced herself to do it when she still was feeling unwell, that she wanted to prove that she could do it and it was harder for her than she thought, or because she did it because being on stage makes her feel alive and she wanted to know that she was alive. "That was it. I wanted to know that I could do what I do. Admittedly it was in a different way. We had to put an interval into the show." She says this as if putting an interval in a show meant she was letting the audience down, making them suffer and a sign of terrible weakness. Lots of artists have intervals in their shows. "Mm," says Kylie, unconvinced that she wants to be that kind of performer. "I fought against the interval and two nights before opening I realised if the show were to work an interval would be a good idea." I remind her doing any show at all was an enormous undertaking for someone so recently after treatment. "It was," she concedes. Will there be a tour for this album? "Next year, yes. At least I'm being positive and thinking at the start of next year I'll be celebrating. That's the first big mark." It's almost as if her cancer has been talked about so much it's been sanitised, tabloidised. It's been triumph over tragedy. But there's very much a sense it shadows her. She tries in that very Kylie way not to make it a haunting shadow, but a let's be in the moment sort of shadow. Despite the euphoric mood of the album and the euphoric reactions to it, she seems a little tired. Perhaps it's the jet lag. Perhaps every time she gets tired she gets worried that it's more than tiredness. Perhaps it's the effect of the meds. What exactly are the other side effects of the medication you're on now? "Not stuff I'd like to share," she says, although she confirms tiredness is one of them. She doesn't trade on sympathy, she trades on dance tunes, happy things. She really doesn't want people to worry about her.

She doesn't like a fuss. She's very contained. The opposite of confessional. The opposite of Madonna. Price, who has worked with them both, says they are almost opposite personalities. "Madonna has a lot more of an aggressive and determined approach. Kylie is much more instinctive." Madonna likes to show off and quote from the Kabbalah. Kylie's intelligence is much less self-conscious. Kylie says she's porous, by which she means she takes in other people's moods and absorbs them. A record company insider who has worked with her for over a decade says, "There's a lot of humility about the way Kylie operates. She operates with a concern for the people around her. Tours which are always such a difficult thing she manages to create an incredible atmosphere. She is very concerned with making other people feel good." Has she changed over the years?

"I think she's the same. She never kicks up a fuss. If she commits to doing something she'll do it. She manages to be one of the most famous women in the country and very private." Weirdly in all the time I've met Kylie I've never heard her moan. Even when all her hair fell out and I suggested she might have been depressed she said, "When you put it in perspective it's a sign your treatment is doing what it's supposed to do." When she broke up from French actor Olivier Martinez she never bitched about him or was bitter. "I'm a fatalist. I always feel that a relationship runs for the duration it's meant to." There are some things that Kylie is sensationally chilled about, and others that stress her completely. "I do moan," she pipes in. "I moan with my PA. We've been together over ten years. We have a good old moan together."

She doesn't moan with or about her current inamorato, Spanish model Andres Velencoso. They met about 18 months ago at a party for the burlesque dancer Dita Von Teese, and she says she's still blessed out with him. "He just left this morning actually. We had take away Spanish last night because I'm very good friend with the Spanish restaurant. I liked it before I met him." Do you speak Spanish? "No, but I've started to understand it a little and I recorded a version of All The Lovers in Spanish. Andres and I were in Spain driving in the car, listening to mixes, and I can't remember if it was him or myself who said I wonder what this would sound like in Spanish.

So I thought let's try it and he did a translation for me." Interesting that she doesn't remember who it was. It shows that she's close. "Yes," she smiles. Is there a lot of separation involved? "We try not to leave it too long between seeing each other. But he's used to travelling. I'm used to travelling. That's how the relationship started. It works for me and I think it works for him." Do you prefer it? "In a way, to have time to do your own thing, to be compartmentalised like that, yes, I think you're right. When I try to do everything at once, it's when I have a meltdown." We discuss the gemininess of the extremes of her personality. Some people call he Kylie, and her close friends call her Min, Min for Minogue or Min for miniature. "Not sure," says one friend, "but she's the maxiest min you're ever going to meet." "I think there are more than two of me. There's a committee. The voices in my head have all been so loud I think I've said something and discusses for instance when we're going on tour, but I'll realise I've only discussed it with myself." I imagine the committee all have different views about her future with Velencoso. Sometimes I imagine it seems relaxed and easy going. I remember one time I met her when she was launching a linen range she seemed intensely in love. She was doing a lot of golf and said she'd taken up cooking. At the time I asked her if she was a piece of her own bed linen what would she be? "The finest linen top sheet. One that goes over you in summer, that just skims you so you are not cold."

Kylie has a lightness and a non-invasiveness. I wonder about the permanence of her relationship with the Spanish one. I get the impression it's one of these things that she likes to love in the moment. For his birthday last year she got a blue topaz stone from India where she did a cameo in a Bollywood movie. "I wanted him to have something jewelleryish but not ostentatious. I had some string and I plaited it into a sort of web into which we put the stone. The stone was tiny and I knew it would be lost in the string, but that was the beauty of it. He wore it for a while and then the stone got lost. OK, gone to the universe. Then he kept wearing the string until that finally wore away. So that's the jewellery I got him. Something precious and something from the kitchen cupboard. Knowing he would lose it and it wasn't secure was the most beautiful part." It seems like a metaphor for the relationship. Does she think she will have babies? "I don't know. I would love to, but…" Her sister Dannii is pregnant. The irony is not lost on her that Dannii is the last person who you'd ever expected to get broody. "She'd say the same thing. Life's funny isn't it. She's blossomed." Kylie doesn't know if she can get pregnant, but she's always wanted to have kids.

"It's very hard." I tell her a lot of people who concentrated on their careers feel terrible that they put it off for too long. "Perhaps if you are resolutely sure that that's not the path you want to go down that's OK. But if there's an element of doubt you can't help but question it. It's not fun." I agree. It's not fun. And what brings you out of that? "Pineapple Dance Studio does it for me," she laughs. There's also her ongoing lifelong relationship with busy. "Busy and I are getting on quite well at the moment. We are negotiating how fraught I will become. The committee meeting in my head has looked at the next week and is trying to be relaxed. Sometimes I get it right and sometimes I slip into old habits. But I'm not as bad as I used to be.' Do you find you throw yourself into busy to get away from other things that are not very pleasant and not easy to deal with? "Partly yes, and partly it's a challenge.

I love what I do and the more I learn the better I am at it. It's like discovering a certain freedom. "If I didn't tour again I'd think oh no, I've finally just found my stride." Do you mean that when you're performing you know who you are? "In the broader sense, yes. I'll be in the old peoples home trying to do a high kick down the corridor. I felt it at the end of that video shoot. I felt about 1,000. Dancing on those heels. I ached." Yet she makes everything look effortless. "Yes, I try." Why is that so important? "I like to make a happy environment. At the end of this video shoot I said thanks to the extras because they'd all been shivering for so long and the second unit director said in 20 years of doing video shoots he'd never seen anyone get on the mic and thank people. And that just astounds me because thanking people is just being a normal, thoughtful person. There are enough difficulties in life." Don't you think if you make things look too effortless people aren't aware of your pain? People take you for granted? "There is that. But that's a whole other… that's not a barrier reef, that's a big deep sea."

I leave Kylie thinking about the deep sea of unsaid things and the unspoken burdens that she must carry around with her. We meet a week later. She is dressed in gold. Everything seems brighter and more flippant, but she says that's because my mood has changed and she's picked up on it. We talk about the importance of having a gay husband and how much she loves Will Baker. "I think the 2.4 family is down the drain these days. Every girl has to have her GBF. In my life it has to work." Does Baker have to approve of her boyfriend? "Yes, they like each other. We all met on the same day and that helped. Before that I remember when I dated some guy for a little bit and he absolutely bristled and still goes on about it. It's sweet, I guess."

Does she think she wants to have a non-gay husband? "Mm. what I might have said before is marriage might not be for me." I don't think Kylie sees things that black and white or conclusively. Not living in the moment stresses her out. And she seems flustered by the question. We are in her management offices, which have an assortment of her lilac satin and feather cushions. Everything is very bright and I can see her skin even more clearly, and she seems extremely happy in it. "I think I'm at the point in my life where I'm feeling good within myself." She agrees she is less guarded, more open, less afraid. "But I think that's because the perception of me has changed. Not least because I was shown to be susceptible as everyone to a terrible disease and to be human, and perhaps because a certain amount of time has passed and I'm still here."

It takes a long time to process going through cancer and come out the other end to actually admit it happened to you. I remember talking to her soon after it was announced she was in remission in 2006. She didn't know how she felt about it. She needed to make an album because she needed to know that she could still sound like her. She needed to make a perfume to know that she could still smell and make a happy smell. But it's been a long process and many decisions of what to keep in your life because it reinforces who you are and what to let go of.

"I'm prone to anxiety, that's for sure. But my current motivation is to try and enjoy the moments that are good and address the moments that aren't good because they colour each other. If you can get a number of moments in a row that are good, that's a reason to be joyful." Does she have plans of what she wants for the future? "I'd like to do some more acting. When I did Dr Who I felt taken back to my acting beginnings and in my spiritual home. I like that people feel the spirit in this album and I'd like it to be joyful."

The last time I met Lauren Hutton was 20 years ago. We hung out in her New York loft apartment filled with memorabilia of her travels round the world. By that time she had already launched a thousand lipsticks and played Richard Gere's lover in American Gigolo.

She was a prototype of the supermodel yet an entirely unlikely fashionista. Quirkily intellectual, a wild thing, brought up in Florida swamplands, she loved nature, animals, Africa, adventure. She willed herself beautiful. Carried herself taller than her 5ft 6in. Promised to fill the gap in her teeth but never did.

She was discovered by Diana Vreeland, the legendary editor of American Vogue, and was featured on 25 covers. She returned to modelling in her late forties, refusing to have her pictures retouched. She overturned an industry where youth equals beauty and continued to wear her wrinkles without shame. Her make-up line specifically for over-forties - Lauren Hutton's Good Stuff - was designed to make women of that age feel that they weren't invisible.

I liked her enormously then. She talked, as now, with honesty and heart. She talked about men who were like leopards in bed. She talked about her father, who left for the war in 1944 when she was 14 months old and never returned to her mother. He survived the war but died of a heart attack at 36.

Hutton would wait every night with her bag packed ready for him to come for her.

The daddy fixation shaped her life. Back when we first met she was four years into a love affair with Malcolm McLaren that she would shortly after end, but not before telling me that McLaren, like the serial killer Ted Bundy, had grown up believing his mother was his sister and his grandmother was his mother. She felt this emotionally displaced him, and if only he could unravel this knot he would become whole. She thought if I wrote about it the father whom he'd never known may come forward, and that's exactly what happened. His father wrote to me and I was able to introduce them. It was an extraordinary story. It's ironic that the day before we are about to meet again Malcolm McLaren dies of cancer.

Back then she wore jeans and jelly sandals. Today the look is similar, though the jeans are skinnier and it's white plimsolls. We are in a hotel suite in Beverly Hills. She now lives mostly in Los Angeles, but near the ocean. Her eyes look haunted as I remind her of our last meeting.

She sinks into the sofa. 'You found Malcolm's father and Malcolm found a brother and a sister… Malcolm said his father wore white leather pants,' she tells me. I see her wanting to reconjure McLaren and everything he inherited. 'Malcolm had many poses, but actually he was one of the gentlest gentlemen I've ever known. I'm so pleased he got to spend time with his father. It was a very important thing for him to have in his life.' She swallows back tears.

'I didn't know anything about his cancer. When I saw him nine months ago he never said anything about it. It was in New York, we went out dancing with his girlfriend and three little Asian girls. We have been best friends for ever. It jerks your chain about what life is.

How much time we've got.' The shock of McLaren's death is still reverberating in her head - taking her back to a near-fatal accident she had on a motorbike 10 years ago. She was on a charity Harley Davidson ride with Dennis Hopper and Jeremy Irons. Irons had just minutes before replaced her helmet with a full-face visor. It saved her face, maybe her life. She lost control of the bike, crashed, suffered multiple leg and arm fractures, broken ribs and punctured lungs. When they found her she was not breathing.

She refers to her time now as her 'life after death'. It's a life that has changed radically. No longer one of seeking thrills, but of concentrating on her cosmetics business. She's also back making films. In The Joneses, her first film since 1999, she plays a feel-bad boss, a mastermind of stealth marketing. She says that for the role she channelled her beleaguered business self. 'I've been in business for the first time in my life these past 10 years and it's been really miserable. I'm making something that is very good. I use it and believe in it and thousands of other women do, which is annoying because I had a great life before. Now it's all conference calls to New York. It's more comfortable living in LA where I have a garden. In New York you have to walk on concrete. Not good on my legs. This was crushed, this was crushed [she points to her thigh and then her knees], five ribs crushed.

'I developed the business while I was in the hospital. I couldn't walk for a year. Before I got killed, as I call it, I had been whale-shark diving in Belize.' She talks with wonder about these giant 40ft fish, which she calls 'aristo fish, because they had no peers for a very long time. No one was as big or as dangerous as them, until shark soup, and the entire 140-million-year-old species of shark will be gone in 10 years.'

She also talks longingly about dog sledding in Alaska. 'The dogs are about 35lb, small and weird, part saluki, part greyhound. These dogs just want to run. There is no way to take lessons, but they tell you no matter what happens don't let go. If you fall off you hang on with one arm, get dragged. Otherwise they'll run and run, get lost and die.' She stretches out her arm like she's holding the reins and never letting go. 'I would fall off all the time and I don't think my bones could take it any more.'

She gives no sign of looking frail. She is 66; looks fierce, striking, determined. She wears her lines like she's won them. Her voice is husky but honeyed. Today she's nostalgic for the days 'when I felt I could do anything I wanted'.

Lauren Hutton is as unlikely a businesswoman as she was model. She was 46 before she even paid her own bills. 'We were all taught to think that Daddy would do it all.'

She shakes her head: 'Daddy replacement.' In her case the daddy replacement was her boyfriend, the businessman Bob Williamson. Again an unlikely inamorato. He was short, not attractive, 12 years older than her. His appeal lay in her belief that he was her protector. They were together for more than 20 years. She met him when she was 21. 'He was a lot of things. He took me to see tribes in the world no one had ever seen that don't exist any more. Bob was an acrobat, a wrestling acrobat on a steel wire. When I would fall off a truck in front of a rhinoceros, Bob would dive over and get me under his arm and rip me out from underneath. He saved my life five times. That's something he was quite genius at, so I felt protected.' In fact, that's the last thing she was.

He disappeared with $30 million of her modelling money that she had invested with him. He died of cancer in 1991 aged 61 and the man she called Bob God left the remains of his money, about $2 million, to a 33-year-old model he married a few days before he died. Her name was Laura Helm but she changed it to Lauren. Spooky and grotesque. Hutton subsequently found out about his multiple infidelities.

I remember him telling me that in a chair in the lounge of the Westbury Hotel in Mayfair. He was perplexed that she'd gone to all the trouble of finding his father, moving him in so many ways, and still seeing her old boyfriend.

'I know that, and it was a terrible thing to do,' says Hutton. 'I went to a shrink and figured out how to stand on my own feet. This man had been my earth and the ground I stood on.'

Hutton talks about McLaren being brought up wearing girls' clothes and how his mother, who was actually his grandmother, would pin up his hair in sausage curls. 'Malcolm was such a boy.' But he grew up feminised. Hutton grew up next to a swamp where she would do tomboy things, but she was very much a girl. In all her unravelling of McLaren there are parallels to her own life. 'My mother was more like a sister to me and my sisters were like my daughters.' There was also a stepfather who dragged them downwardly mobile. In the unravelling of McLaren's knots she must have been trying to unravel something about herself. 'You are exactly right. At that point I had to retreat and build myself up again, grow into my own self, which I never had been.'

After the split from McLaren and Williamson's death her search for physical risks seemed more imperative. Perhaps because physical risks replaced emotional ones. She has now sold 'three good motorcycles. I am not attracted to danger like I was because as you get older things break easier. I don't do bikes anymore. It would be foolish. I had amnesia until about two minutes before the crash for two weeks after. I'd never had an operation before and I've had seven operations in nine years. The bike reared up at 110mph for about 20ft.

You make an instant choice: which way do I turn? Do I jump? I jumped off the bike and pushed it away from me. It came down in a thousand pieces.' The choice to jump saved her life.

After that what could scare her? 'Doing this movie. I was terrified. My heart was beating on the outside. These wonderful actors and a good script. I was terrified.' I doubt that Hutton was terrified for long because she enjoyed processing the fear and turning it into a new part of herself, a new frown line.

She is not fearless, but she's brave. Brave enough to be emotionally available, present, honest. Brave to appear nude at the age of 61 in a magazine to give other women courage. Brave enough to take on complicated men and not blame them if they were not kind to her. There isn't a slither of victim in her bones.

She wants me to find the original story about her and McLaren because she is writing a memoir; maybe she just wants it as something to hold on to. I remember how vividly she demonstrated holding on to the sled dogs and how emphatically she seemed to feel the words 'don't let go'.

It's been an intense time for Lenny Henry. A tapestry of turning points and crossroads. Perhaps it started with his reinvention as an actor when he performed the richly praised Othello. That said, it couldn't really have started there. It was other events in his life that led him to need to throw himself into that part, that one thing that was entirely different to everything he'd done before.

In his personal life there's been the shock of his divorce from Dawn French. Their 25 year bond seemed a touchstone for strong marriage and proof that love existed. The love still exists but the marriage doesn't. He's had a bit of time to take this in. Officially the split was in April, but they'd separated several months before that, and talked and talked and talked it over so they could get used to the idea, to make sure it was the right thing.

You sense this new reflective Henry when you meet him. There's something strikingly soulful. He has indeed been excavating this part of himself, coming up with his new show Cradle To Rave with which he is set to embark on a massive tour early next year.

It's a musical memoir. Songs that have had a profound impact on his life. It was impersonating Stevie Wonder that first catapulted him to fame in 1975 when he won the New Faces TV talent show.

He is impressively massive, by that I mean tall, broad, not fat. He's in a dark sober suit flecked with a little playful lurex, a metaphor for the extremes contained within. Very serious and profoundly silly.

It's a gloomy afternoon in London's Groucho Club. He seems easy company, but nervy at the same time. He says there's something about the time of day that's made him crave a cigarette. He doesn't smoke any more. "My mother used to smoke, but when she became a born again Christian she just stopped and never smoked or drank again," he says impressed.

"She was in hospital having a hysterectomy and it was a very big deal. A nun came to visit her and sat with her and helped her hand and my mum was moved by it so she decided to reclaim her Christianity.

Her Christian faith had waivered when she had come to Dudley in the West Midlands from Jamaica in the 1950s. However, she always wanted her children to be God fearing. "I went to Sunday school every Sunday for the first 14 years of my life. It was bizarre. A white van used to come and collect us and take us to the St. Thomas Church Hall. It was where they had discos on Saturday nights, so when I was older I'd be at Sunday school thinking last night I was dancing to Slade and David Bowie and trying to snog Yvonne Farmer.

"The church had the smell of sweaty youths, socks, cider and illicit fags. That period of my life just before I was on New Faces I crammed a lot in. it's always very alive in my brain," he says as if he reconjuring all these heady smells. As if the days before he found sudden fame were precious moments where he was most himself. Perhaps the days when he was most himself.

New Faces was huge. "I went from nothing to everything in the space of three minutes. The whole idea of fame and stardom was it's for them, not for me. I was going to be an electrician or work in a factory like my dad.

"I was in Westbury Technical College halfway through getting a diploma for engineering, making welding machines, and my life had changed. My dad Winston Jervis Henry didn't know much about it. He was a very serious hard little walnut of a Jamaican man. My mum is where I get my size from. My dad was little, hard and tough.

"I saw Chris Eubank the other day and I patted him on the shoulder, it was like patting a rock. My dad was like that. He never said much to me about anything. My dad died in 1977. I was 19. He didn't really talk to me much. He'd say things like keep your feet on the ground and turn the TV over, I want to watch the cricket."

Weirdly, earlier today Henry had been to his home town of Dudley making a corporate speech at the foundry where his father used to work. "I saw today how hard it must have been for him. He never talked about work when he got home, but came home covered in soot, get in the bath and leave a bouillabaisse of dirt, and then sit in the front room and read the Daily Mirror for hours. And then demand that we turn the television over to cricket.

"There was an Elvis Presley comeback programme where he wore a black leather suit and sang One Night With You. It was seven minutes in and Dad came in and wanted to watch the cricket. I still can't bring myself to watch it. Today in this foundry I realise why he was silent and cross all the time."

This all changed in the last few days of his life. "He had renal failure and a bit of dementia. I had such a confusing relationship with him. But in his last few days he wanted to talk a lot. On his death bed he wanted to cram a lot in because he knew he was going. He'd talk about Jamaica and his life there and when he first came to England. I would just sit there and nod and then he was gone. I didn't cry. There was respect for him but the emotional connection wasn't there.

"I used to talk to Dawn about her relationship with her dad who also died when she was young." He killed himself when she was 19(?). I was very jealous of her relationship with her dad because she was so close. My dad just didn't talk to the children very much. When I think of how much I say I love you to my daughter and talk to her even when she doesn't want me to… my dad never had a conversation like that with me. He never said he loved me, he never hugged me, never said he was proud of me. If this was an American film now we'd be on the floor in bits, a pile of lachrymose bollocks." He is laughing now, perhaps otherwise he would be crying.

"Seymour, my second oldest brother (there are seven siblings altogether) cried at my dad's funeral like a howling wolf, and I thought where's that for me. That came when my mum died.

"Mum was the one. She brought us up really. The parental connection was very powerful. She ruled by fear. She worked in various factories all over Dudley. She became my hero because she'd come to the school and speak up for me. A teacher at primary school kicked me because I threw paint. She came to the school. She yelled and shouted and demanded an apology. The teachers would hide from her. No teachers in this school. Kids teach themselves."

His mother was encouraging but worried that he didn't have enough education, something to fall back on. It wasn't until his forties that Henry felt this chasm and perhaps it was because he wanted to do something for her after she died he started studying. "I've done my MA and now I thought I'm going to do a PhD. Quite a lot of my family didn't have the education opportunities we should have had. And that's what's driven me to complete my education."

Something about pleasing his mother. His mother wanted him to have something to fall back on. Soon after she died he started studying. For his PhD he's going to direct two documentaries, one about sport the other about himself.

He got his MA in English literature from the Open University in 2007. It brought him inspiration from among other things Shakespeare. Performing Othello was a huge turning point. "Maybe a second act turning point before the finale, but it was a big one." Before that he'd been stuck on a career low. "I'd got slightly bored spinning wheels and waiting. I was all over the place. I found myself having to make things for me to do, like writing jokes for other people, making demos, having meetings about meetings. I became a bit busy." The classic exampole of busy with nothing to do, busy for projects for which he had little passion.

His passion is back though when he talks about his new show because it's been psychologically challenging. He has been revisiting poignant moments in his life, other turning points that might have been accelerated or inspired by music. The director Sam Buntrock came recommended by Steve Martin.

"I'd been doing a documentary about The method for Radio 4. We were in New York and we went into Orso's restaurant and there was Steve Martin. He's the reason I wore a pink suit for most of the eighties. He was having lunch with Paul Simon. I've got a million songs on my iPod of his. So I walk in and trip over the first, second, third, fourth and fifth chair in front of the two people I admire most in the world and thought this is really bad Len, the moment they think a very big black guy walked in and tripped over everything. I'd met him before and I was hoping that he didn't remember me, so I didn't go over and say hello but he came over to me, which was a very big thing for him as he's very shy, and that's when he said you should meet Sam Buntrock. It's a show about everything. About me being a kid, loving Elvis, the whole thing with my dad, about how songs have affected me at different times in my life and about how I Just Called To Say I Love You was the worst song Stevie Wonder ever wrote and how that was my song that I'd sing to Dawn on the phone when we were going to get married."
Did she throw up? He chuckles only slightly. "We both knew it was the cheesiest song ever apart from Ebony and Ivory which was another terrible song, but that was Paul McCartney, so you can't fully blame him for that."

Conversation constantly zigzags in and out of Dawn. He doesn't avoid talking about her. There is no awkwardness. "I talk about the compromise of how your music changes when you get married. It's a Venn diagram of the music you love and your partner loves and in the middle there's Sade. I listen to a lot of Sade.

"On Dawn's side there was Amy Winehouse, James Taylor, Joni Mitchell and on mine it was George Clinton and Funkadelic. We grew to sort of like each others music and then when we had Billie we stopped listening to any nasty hip hoppy thing and it was every Disney soundtrack that existed. So at one point I'll sing Part Of Your World from Little Mermaid." And he starts singing. Plaintive, profound, powerful. He really does have a great voice. He reminds me that he sang with the Style Council and Kate Bush asked him to sing on The Red Shoes.

The show revisits that lush part of his career where he felt he could do anything. "When I went to America to do True Identity in 1991 I realised they had their own Richard Pryor, they didn't need me pretending to be Richard Pryor, so I had a massive career rethink.

"I felt that I was a construct for a few years. The Lenny Henry Show had six writers who wrote jokes. Len, what do you want to talk about? And suddenly there's a persona which is created, which is odd. I did Delbert 88-89, this dandy from Brixton who wore Jasper Conran suits. It wasn't Len, but it was a version of Len that was near enough to be confusing. I was galvanised to start my own production company which I did for seven years, but there were lots of things to learn. The construct was that I was whacky and zany. I did television series, stuff that wasn't brilliant by any stretch of the imagination, but let's do it until something else comes along.

"What I realised when I did Othello was that if you stop concentrate on one thing, work your bollocks off, there's a possibility you might be good. We all rolled up our sleeves and worked very hard, I did Alexander classes, voice classes, movement classes, everything. It was like there was a hole in the sky and the sun came in and said this is where you stop, you focus. It did pay off.

"It was a tough year in every respect. I was away from home and it didn't help. Dawn was supportive when I was very much in work mode and trying not to let everyone down, but everything sort of stopped really. I'm not saying it was the cause of me and Dawn separating, but I don't think it helped, put it that way."

You are struck by his efforts to be emotionally articulate and honest, and by his vulnerability. In the show he is the narrator, plays all the characters and plays the piano.

"I started learning the piano on my 40th birthday and on the same day Billie was seven. She would hit the piano with her head, hide under the seat where I would dutifully sit there. Billie never did the grades and now Billie can play like Prince up and down the keyboard and I'm on grade 4. Sometimes it's so stressful it's like there's a 40 stone goblin on my chest, the piano goblin."

Does he have other goblins that sit there? "Yes, there are lots. There's the sense of humour goblin. There are lotsy, you just have to sidetrack."
One such talked about sidetrack was in (1999?) when he was checked into the Priory shortly after a much publicised moment when a fan ended up staying in his room when he was on tour. Nothing happened, but at the time there was a paparazzi cavalcade and red top frenzy saying that his marriage was about to disintegrate. French told me separately that his Priory moment was brought on by his mother's death.

"It would be wrong to say it was all about my mother's death. It was about what we've been talking about. Trying to find oneself in all the constructions. And all the work that one was expected to do and that I was pushing myself to do because my mum depended on me and I was the one in the family who made it, so I had to help."

So there was a conflict with his own creative desires and making sure financial support was coming in? A lot on his shoulders. "Well it felt like that for a while because Mum was sick seven years before she died. The toxicity of her illness affected all of us."

Does he mean the change of dynamics that this strong feisty woman that used to beat up teachers was now feeble? "And beat us up. And suddenly she was ill. It was a big effect. The centre of your universe gone like that, and it really affected me psychologically. Her illness went from 1991 to 1998 and it was very difficult. It was a miracle that I was able to be funny because there were so many sad things going on. She was a diabetic, a double amputee, she had glaucoma, was asthmatic and had a heart condition.

"My Mum was very very tough. It wasn't until she had a stroke which took her speech away… Once that happened she just thought there's no point. I had a measure of guilt because I was the Sunday one. Bev and Kay and Seymour were there every day. On Sunday me and Billie would drive up with a big bag of sweets. It was a massive strain. She would be looking at Billie pretending to be a horse in the gardens of the hospital and I'd be holding her hand. (Billie, now 19(?), is at equestrian school). She had a very expressive face, so you knew she was understanding something.

She was stable and I asked the doctor should I stay here or go on the tour in Australia. He thought she would be fine. Four days later she's gone and I'm in Canberra and that was the moment this wolf howl came out of me. I never want to hear it again. It was my sister Kay's husband who told me, and he used to take my Mum's clothes and wash and iron them, and I wanted to say thank you for being so kind but I couldn't finish the word kind. This noise came out of me. Thank you for being so k… k… k… and I cried for 30 minutes."

There is an intensity to him, but it doesn't come over as heavy or sad, just raw. You sense that he is honing all these feelings into his show. You sense that he'd rather feel pain than feel bored because at least it makes him feel alive. Was it a very tough time when he and Dawn decided to break?

"Yes. It was very very tough." And then he perks, "What's really brilliant is the way we've somehow managed to be really supportive of each other throughout the whole thing. All this stuff has had an effect on me, so for whatever reason I've changed a lot. We were friends through a lot of heartache, so that grew into a friendship that became this thing where we knew we were doing that. We love our kid and each other. As I say because I was away a lot we agreed that we were more friends than a couple and it was time to think about that really. The thing we agreed on was to be friends and love Billie. Dawn's my best friend."

He didn't want to be friends within a marriage and defer from making it so final? "We both knew we wanted to kind of draw a line and that we would be friends and Billie's parents, and we made that decision. I watched my parents thinking you're not very happy and I didn't want to get to the point where we were unhappy."

He means a pre-emptive strike? "Yes. We talked about it a lot. Dawn is very very smart, and I want to be smart. So we talked and talked and talked until that was it. Until we knew it was the right thing to do."

I remember Dawn telling me that Lenny was extremely private and that he kept certain things hidden in secret emotional drawers. "Yes, but I'm getting better. Grief counseling helped me get better at expressing myself. I wouldn't have been able to do this 15 years ago. I wouldn't have had the tools."

He seems in command, resolved, ambitious even. "What's really interesting is people say have you seen Dawn lately and I'm seeing her all the time." In fact after our interview he's rushing to see her. But is he seeing somebody else? "Maybe."

Well? "It's an interesting time. We're still going through the process of a divorce. I have done a little bit of dating. But it would be wrong to bring something into my daughter's life so soon." And then he talks about what has become a real love in his life, the possibility of doing another Shakespeare play.

I am waiting for Liv Tyler in a French bohemian café bar in Los Angeles, the nearest you get to Europe on the West Coast. The maitre d' has shown me to the best corner table with plush armchairs. As soon as Tyler arrives, looking a mixture of flustered and relaxed from a Korean spa massage, she wants to move from the top table because the armchairs are so big and chunky we will be too far away from each other. We move to a lesser table where her melodic cooing voice wraps easily around you.
She lives in New York but is in LA to promote her upcoming movies Super and The Ledge, both indie and interesting. She's instantly girlie, explaining how she bought "loads of black tights but I am sweltering and I don't know what to put on." She wants to go shopping for vintage dresses.
She's wearing a floaty top that's black and silky, it could have been an exotic pyjama, and a thin creamy pink cardigan. She's gorgeously beautiful of course but not in a LA or modellish way. She's very accessible, relaxed in her own skin. She is a very wise 33.
You recognise her full pillowy lips as being inherited from her father Steven Tyler of Aerosmith and now American Idol judge.
She tells me she chose our location "because they have the most amazing butter here, and I love butter on anything." She also loves a full English breakfast and Yorkshire pudding the way her former mother-in-law used to make them. She was married to British musician Royston Langdon, but they are now divorced. They have a gorgeous son, Milo, who is 5. She shows me pictures: how tall he is, how blonde. "A proper English lad." He has the Tyler pillow lips.
We order Campari sodas, refreshing "but with just a little buzz." You can't help but warm to a woman who wants to drink at lunchtime in Los Angeles. In fact you can't help but warm to her; thoughtful, empathic, strong, funny.
When I told my friends I was about to meet Liv Tyler - all of them - men, women, gay, straight - excitedly told me how much they love her. Tyler gasps "Oh, that makes me feel so good. I know as an actress men might love you, but the fact women might love you as well is amazing." Perhaps it's because some of her earlier movies - Bertolucci's Stealing Beauty and Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings cycle - were so iconic. All of them said they in fact love her because she seemed so normal.
It's a curious thing to love somebody because they're a famous and beautiful actress who is normal. It's an even stranger thing that Tyler manages normality so well. Her upbringing by any standards was weird.
Her mother Bebe Buell was very young when she had her. She was a model known for a succession of romantic links to rock stars. She was living with Todd Rundgren when Liv was born and for the first eight or nine years of her life she had assumed he was her father. Then she met Steven Tyler and realised he was in fact her birth father.
"People have this idea of me growing up on tour, and that's not real at all. Because my mum was very young when she had me I think she might not have had the emotional tools to know exactly to take care of me, so she turned to the support of her family. Her mother and my aunt helped raise me. I spent two years with my aunt, a year with my mum and two years with my grandparents. I feel grateful for those dynamics. My grandmother for example is an etiquette teacher, she taught me everything I know about how to communicate and have good manners.
"My mother was incredibly artistic and I had opportunities with her that a normal kid might never have had. My aunt and uncle lived in a farmhouse in Maine so I could run around fields and play in the chicken coop. I'm very good at adapting, which s a good thing and a bad thing because it's easy for me to suss a situation out and adapt to it. At this point in my life I am trying to define a little bit more of what I want as opposed to adapting to what other people want." Her eyes seem to fill with a momentary sadness.
Tell me about your two dads. How exactly did that work out? (Both of them turned up for her wedding and had an equal part in it). "Todd was my dad. I didn't live with him. I saw him on holidays at Christmas and Labor Day. He was always loving and kind to me and put me through a beautiful private school. He loved me even though I wasn't his daughter. He decided before I was born that I needed a father and he was going to have that role in my life, so we have a special bond. It's the most generous act that anyone has ever shown me in their entire life, it made me feel very loved.
"Steven? I met him when I was about eight for the first time. I figured it out that he was my dad. Everyone else was very cautious and tried not to tell me. Steven wasn't in a position to be my father at that time.," she says diplomatically with all the manners that her grandmother taught her.
Does she mean he was a crazy rock and roll person? "Yeah… he's always been amazing. I remember the first time I met him. He brought me a Shirley Temple and he was magical to me I loved him instantly as soon as I met him.
"When I met my sister Mia it was like meeting my identical twin. She is a year younger than me. We look different now. She has lots of tattoos and piercings."
She still seems awestruck by the idea she knew her biological father was her father. "These things are so powerful. If you pass your father in the street there's something powerful that's there you would know… looking back at your childhood and becoming a parent yourself makes you see your parents in such a different light. You realised they're all just humans."
You imagine it wasn't always easy for her to be so calm. Milo certainly has changed her perspective on so many things. Her career has been quite stop start.
"Since Milo was born I've been going through all kinds of personal things. Getting divorced and trying to allow myself the room to heal from that and rebuild my life. My modelling career is thriving more than ever before. (she has a long standing contract with Givenchy)I'm doing Pantene this summer. I enjoy it and it's convenient because it doesn't take me away for such a long time."
She explains to me she only takes on projects that don't involve leaving Milo for long. It's incredibly important to her that he has stability as much as possible. "When I was making Super (a dark comedy where she plays a former drug addict who leaves her husband for a drug dealer) I went back and forth every week (from Louisianna) .
"When I made The Ledge (a thriller love triangle. Her husband is an the evangelical Christian and she has an affair with an atheist) Milo stayed with Roy. I literally didn't want to read any scripts because I didn't want to be tempted to go away and work when Milo was starting kindergarten. Kindergarten is really intense for children and for parents, so I just didn't want to leave him."
He recently graduated and celebrated with a milkshake.
She doesn't say it but it's clear she wants to give him the stability she never had. People are always coming up to her and saying "I really like your dad.' "Sometimes they're talking about Todd and sometimes Steven….. When this first happened , I was about nine, I remember spending six hours on a chair looking out a window, and thinking everything happens for a reason. I chose to see the positive and not come out of this angsty or angry. They had made the decision they made to protect me. It wasn't conventional and that has affected how I tried to raise Milo."
Is she trying to make things super conventional for him? "Well it depends on what my definition of normal is. It's taken me a while to realise I'm not normal. My grandmother says 'stop trying to live an ordinary life. You are not ordinary.' So I'm trying to embrace that aspect as well."
Has her upbringing affected her relationships with men, her choices? She almost splutters out the few sips of Campari she's just had. "Any answer that I would give would either be too vague or too personal. Roy is an incredibly special man. A wonderful father. I love him very much. I'm so lucky to be Milo's mum. I tell him that all the time."
Does she think she ever wants to reunite with Roy? "How could you ask me that?" she says genuinely shocked. She talks of her ex with such ease and fondness it really made me wonder. I don't get an answer but she has said many times how the break-up was really difficult for her.
Right now though she says, "I am very happy. Tremendously happy." She shows me a picture of her dog, a King Charles spaniel called Neil, wearing a pain patch after a dental op. "Look at that. Isn't he the cutest? Such a sweet loyal dog." The dog gives her pleasure. Not finding out the sex of her baby till he was born gave her huge delight. And "beautiful jars of cucumber juice and coconut water from Organic Avenue in New York." Does she drink them for her skin? "No, I have good genetics. I eat jam, sugar, meat, everything. If I'm preparing for something specific I might be no wheat or dairy, brown rice and kale for two weeks. It's not to lose weight, it makes me feel centred and calm. A lot to do with it is how your face looks. I'm not very strict because I enjoy cooking and being with friends and being flexible, which you can't if you're on a strict diet all the time."
She certainly didn't crash diet to lose baby weight. She simply carried on being comfortable in her body. This was all part of what makes her normal and loved for it.
What makes her happy? "Honestly the simplest thing. I don't mean that in a cheesy way. I mean no matter how exciting and grand things get it's the little things that make me happy. Being here this weekend. Staying with my girlfriend and her daughter. Giggling and gossiping. Drinking wine and listening to music. It's lovely." Of course that's what makes her lovely too.

Before I met Lynda La Plante I imagined her to be like the characters she's most famous for writing about - those hard-bitten, hard-boiled, cheap grey-suited detective superintendents.
I've read about how she likes to hang out with forensics, spend hours researching in prisons, talking to victims' loved ones, empathizing with their vulnerability. Nothing is too grim or painful for her. The first paragraph of her latest book Bloodline she has surpassed herself in cold-blooded gore. It opens describing a person's last desperate minutes, a struggle for life and a brutalised end. Once again it has ambitious DC Anna Travis as its detective heroine. Earlier Travis stories have already been televised in the Above Suspicion series.
You'd never expect Plante, who is obviously so attracted to darkness, to be so bright - red hair, green and pink and white Indian top with mirror balls hanging from it. She is not at all dry. She is in fact sparkling, funny and enthusiastic. The RADA trained actress is never far from the surface as she regales you with different voices and splendidly drawn characters.
She's just been hired by Lionsgate to write an epic drama series about pirates and she's very excited that there's parrot wallpaper in the hotel suite that's been chosen randomly.
Lionsgate bought a book called Pirates of all Nations. "It's so detailed and unbelievably researched they must have spent a lot of money, but I said to them, 'My problem is this books is so full of information it doesn't lift characters our. I need to go away and dig and find characters that fascinate me. I've always loved things around this era. The first one I came up with was Ned Teach, born in Bristol, and he became Blackbeard. He was on board ships from the age of eight. These are all young sexy pirates. I see him looking like Rupert Everett when he first exploded on to film.
"There are no old pirates. They were usually dead before 30. This is the most risqué period of time because it was when these young pirates ruled the sea. It was a period just before darkness and the slave trade and there were female pirates as well."
And that's how La Plante comes over today, with all the gusto of a female pirate. She is unstoppable telling me various pirate details that she's just uncovered. She's excited by de-licing parlours where they would have lice picked out of their hair and have it perfumed, long and silky. "And they would wear heavy gold earrings so if they died they would always have a coffin."
She says how much the Americans are trying to please her and how pleased she is with that. She's wearing a collection of flashy gold rings, one of them with a giant black stone looks very piratey. "Yes. Given to me recently as a congratulatory thing for signing the Pirates. One of the producers gave it to me. They are keeping me very sweet."
How unlike their British counterparts. "I can't seem to be able to work for the BBC. They are very difficult. My most recent project with them was Mata Hari. I was in a museum in Holland and I saw her shoes. She had very big feet. She was probably over six foot, and I was inspired by these shoes. They were dancing slippers. The BBC put an editor on to it who said, 'Have you ever heard of someone called Orson Welles.' I thought he was joking. And I said yes, and he said 'Well he made this film called Citizen Kane and your version of Mata Hari should be very similar.' I had to tell him that Mata Hari was a real person. And he said, 'Oh, was Colette real too?' This was very scary." She shakes her head in horror. "Anyway, they dropped it."
I get the impression she isn't impressed with British television in general. "Nobody in England keeps me sweet except my book publishers. Recently there was this television crime writers award and I was up for it and I pointed out that every single crime writer listed as a television writer did not write the television adaptation. Ian Rankin does not write the TV adaptation, and Colin Dexter has never written a Morse. Nor has Ruth Rendell or Val McDermid. I was in a class of one, but I didn't get the award." No television crime writer won it - "I feel there are many unsung TV writers that need to be credited for what they do.
"Above Suspicion has Cieran Hinds and Kelly Reilly in it but they are never told if there will be another one, and they are never out of work, so I am in a queue trying to get them. I have to wait for deferred payment every time for my fee. I don't get a producers fee or a writer's fee."
What does deferred payment mean? "It means that I put my money back into the show and we have to wait to see the viewing figures to see if there will be another one. And some British television is sloshing with money."
That's not to say La Plante hasn't done extremely well for herself. Now 64, she was born in Liverpool in unexceptional circumstances. Her father was a salesman. She has a brother and a sister and another sister who was killed in a road accident at the age of five while her mother was pregnant with La Plante. You wonder if that has a tragic resonance with her. Even in the womb she was having to face death and loss.
It was Prime Suspect that shot her into visibility. Whose decision was it to end Prime Suspect? "Helen Mirren's I think. By that time I had nothing to do with it. I was a writer for hire, I didn't own it. But I learnt from that. Now I own book rights and I own film rights, so if they ever do a Prime Suspect they have to come back to me and recently NBC in conjunction with ITV made a new one, without Helen Mirren of course. I would never have made Jane Tennyson an alcoholic."
Once she's on a roll she's unstoppable. She tells me about the brutal ending of Trial And Retribution after eleven years. "That show was led by a brilliant actor, David Heyman. They had huge viewing figures. Don't you think they would have had the respect to take him to lunch and say we're not going to do another one. They didn't. it's this dismissive attitude towards talent that breaks my heart. Fortunately publishing has always been security and freedom because when you are writing the novel it's just you and the paper."
You and some very grisly occurances. I tell her my thoughts that the opening paragraphs - the most dizzyingly brutal of any book ever. "Do you think so?" she says quite excited. She explains it took her six months to research and that it was fairly fast to write. She does 12 hour days writing with a big computer. "I can do anything for 12 hours if I want."
The twist of Bloodline is about DNA. It is as if a mother used an egg donor and a sperm donor there would be no bloodline. She seems shocked at that piece of research.
Everyone seems obsessed with her blood line. Curiously in 1999 she became pregnant with triplets from donated eggs and sperm but miscarried. Yet she seemed shocked by that piece of research. While she had been married to American musician Richard La Plante she had two miscarriages and subsequent fertility treatment failed. They divorced and she said several times how she didn't blame a man for leaving her because she couldn't give him children.
Everyone seems obsessed with her bloddline. She adopted a baby, Lorcan, when she was 57. He is now seven. It seems to have caused some outrage that she's an older mother.
"It's very strange. You realise people at my son's school talk about me and my son in front of their child. I am at the gates. I pick hum up. I go to all the functions. What differentiates. Me. Not one single parent has ever come up to me and said I saw your film, I read your book. They don't want anything to do with me. The small-mindedness about age is wretchedly sad and my fear is it will affect him in some way. I hope it won't.
"He's a very sophisticated child because he's been around the world so many times, and he's very inquisitive about me. 'What are you doing today?' 'Can I come with you to be interviewed?'"
Her day is very much centred around Lorcan. "I saw Jack Dee last night on a comedy programme where he found his son had to be a bee by nine o'clock the next morning and it's very much like that. He has so many things going on. Where's his cricket bat? Where's his cricket whites? Oh no, it's ice hockey today. He's very good at sports. He loves the TV programme How It's Made. How is this tyre made? Where does titanium come from? And he loves Myth Busters. So I watch all those with him."
She delights in telling me about the latest episode involving Davy Crockett. She talks in long rambling sentences that sometimes don't quite follow on. Suddenly she's talking about when they went skiing and the swimming pool was boiling and there was no room service and it was a terrible hotel. "Hotel Les Grandes Alpes, Courcheval. It sucks. Don't go there."
"Such a rip-off. I have my own swimming pool and I don't want some child pissing next to me. I can't stand it." She says she doesn't go in her own swimming pool very much though, but she always does summers in New York and Lorcan will go "to a very good camp for boys. They learn surfing, horse riding and tennis. And I'll write about pirates.
"The thing I notice more in America is because the mothers are all like 12, they often say to Lorcan, 'Oh, you are with your grandma today' and I say 'Mother.' They don't say it to a grey-haired man. Men have a far easier ride if they are an older father than a woman who is an older mother. You just have to laugh it off but it never ceases to amaze me how rude these people are. There is an obsession with age."
She is about to go to Australia where she's hoping to start pre-production on a movie with Nicole Kidman called The Last Woman to Hang In Australia. "I saw this book when I was in Australia and it had a grotesque hangman's hood on the front, and on the back I thought what is Nicolle Kidman doing here. But it wasn't Nicole Kidman, it was the woman they hanged. She is the spitting image. They are identical, same colouring, same height. She was called Jean Miller, an abused woman but a tough one. She was only 32 when she was hanged.
"How's this for coincidence. I had a driver on a film and I sold him my old car. When he is not a unit driver he picks people up from Heathrow. So this man gets into my ex car and says to my ex driver, 'You don't happen to know Lynda La Plante do you?' and he said 'Yes, you are sitting in her car', and he said, 'I've just read the most mind-blowing script. I'm Nicole Kidman's agent."
I read that she wanted to get a lunchtime facelift. "You go in and get a blast of oxygen. But I don't know about that now. I have a terrific surgeon friend who says if I lose a stone and a half he will give me one for free."
Would that make a difference for a facelift? "No, but he said it was the only way I would deserve one." I used to be completely fit. Not so much any more."
She concedes she doesn't even swim so much in her own pool any more. Does she do other exercise like yoga? "I've never been able to cope with that but I walk every day with my dog in the park. He's a really annoying little fellow, a cockapoo. He steals everything and buries it in the garden. I have these Italian gardeners and they say (she puts on Italian accent) 'Scusa me. I have found another brassiere.'" She goes into another character and screams, "Oh no, it's not my new Rigby and Peller is it?... I have more pants and bras hidden in my garden… People come in for tea and I see him disappearing down the path with their cardigans."
Running after him should make her lose some weight. "Not at all. It's because I have the little fellow at home and I eat what he eats." She loves the cuisine designed for a seven-year-old. She's just had a BLT. "In fact I like French fries more than he does. He loves sushi. I can't eat that."
Do you have any relaxing time? "No, I don't have any. Not really. I am the person who can't stand somebody else walk the dog. I suppose watching Myth Busters is quite relaxing. I sleep mostly four or five hours. I do have nightmares. The most grotesque dreams…"
I'm not surprised she is kept awake by some of your characters and what they get up to. "Oh that doesn't bother me because that's like every day." She has been digging around with forensics for so long it really does seem every day to her. She reminds me she watches Jeremy Kyle, whose programme can be quite inspiring for plots all about betrayal, lies, desperation, sadness, brutality.
"The thing that bothers me is that 379 young men have died in Afghanistan all under 30. I find that so deeply sad, in the prime of their lives. I don't understand how we could have this great royal wedding and everyone is waving flags when we are at war. This is our Vietnam. All of them leaving behind bereft families, babies, fiancés."
Does that make her want to write about it? "No, it's too dark."
But this is Lynda La Plante, she revels in the darkness. She thinks her darkness is normal... Where does she think her desire to write about dead bodies, violent ends, criminal minds, ever came from? "No idea," she says as if she's never thought about it before. "When I was a child I was always fascinated by The Untouchables. Al Capone. Not the crime but the darkness. What fascinates me is the knitting of it together. How did they do it and why? I was obsessed."
What about death itself? She writes about it. Is that a way of avoiding thinking about it, or is it something she thinks about all the time? "Of course it's crossed my mind because I've had a series of illnesses, but you just get along with your life, you keep going. You just have to be very positive."
Does she have support from a partner? "Well yes, but he doesn't live here. He'll be in American when I'm in America. But I don't expect support from him because I am my support, I always have been. I don't need anybody else around me. I know their loyalty and that's all I need."
A little sadly she continues, "I think men like to be needed but I don't need them. They all like a needy woman." I tell her I think the opposite. Her eyes seems to enflame. "A needy woman will always be the one that will split up a marriage. A needy woman is the most dangerous of all. I have never been that. I don't admire it. Men like it because they think they can be macho. I have no interest in that.
"My partner is a great man. A fit man. Incredibly successful, and we have a good strong relationship. I've read that he is finance but she doesn't go into any more details. "But I have someone who is placed first in my life and no one will ever oust him from that position."
If she wasn't writing what else would she be doing? She doesn't know. "I remember when I was a waitress with no money. I had worked the breakfast shift in a restaurant in Regent's Park. While I was leaving I saw on the other side of the pavement I was about to cross over a navy blue Bentley Continental, a convertible. There was a lady driving it with a straw hat and in the back was the most beautiful blonde child and as I passed it I thought I want that and I locked it in as a dream. And when I got my navy blue Continental I did have a straw hat and my son was in the back seat. He was blonde then but he's dark now." It's as if she manifested it all. Is this spooky or just proof that she is an extremely determined woman.
"I remember another moment that has never left me. I was about five years old, in French class. And the teacher said, 'Oh Michelle and Michaela your mummy's here. She's come to take you home early.' I can describe everything this woman wore - her two piece suit, her shoes, her hair. The teacher held each of them by the hand and said say goodbye to everybody in French. 'Au revoir Michelle. Au revoir Michaela.' And that night she gassed them and herself. And I kept asking where are they? Where did they go? Why did I remember that woman's face? It's because I didn't understand what death was for so long. I always remember that. Just say au revoir."

On the way to meet Marianne Faithfull in Dublin I thought I was going to die. The plane couldn't land because of horrific winds. It circled while everyone was tossed from side to side, and then decided to land anyway on top of the wind that threw us all about the place.
By the time I arrived at the tinkling tea lounge of the Shelbourne Hotel I was in a heightened state. I had an out of body experience. I soon realised this was the perfect mode to meet Marianne Faithfull, who has been in a heightened state and out of her body most of her life.
I'd read that she can be imperious, defensive. She's none of that, but she has a curious commanding and demanding presence. We sit down for tea and she orders water for her French paracetamol. On her new album Horses And High Heels she's written a happy song about eternity.
"Eternity and death. It's quite a paradox to find joy in that, but I think that's the right way to do it. I'm not facing death. I reckon that's a long way off and I think by the time it happens you're ready for it and you're tired."
Of course she did face death when she discovered a lump in her breast five years ago, but more of that later. Horses And High Heels is somewhat of a triumph. Songs that she's written and songs from the seventies, like Love Song, covered by Elton John, sung in her haunting and pain soaked voice.
"I'm having a good phase really. I'm trying not to make people cry." Her guitarist on the album, Doug Pettibone, says that her voice could sing a menu and make people cry. She insists though she's not about the crying but the surviving.
"I'm having a great life and I want to go on having one. I'm not sure yet what my higher mission is but I have a feeling it might be great. Before I thought my mission was death, but now my mission is life. I feel quite different now to that bad, stupid, silly girl. I feel that everything is before me like a wonderful banquet."
Uplifting thoughts from a 64 year old who has spent a life perfecting the art of self-destruction. She has a smoky cackle. She still smokes, but that's about all she does. And later on in the interview, when she learns I know Paul McKenna, she asks that we call him now and be hypnotised to give up cigarettes.
"I think it's really helpful if you don't drink and do drugs. It's frustrating sometimes. I can't say it's a bed of roses. But it's better for my wilder emotions and my self-sabotage if I don't. Drink breaks down your spiritual system, and then you go back on to the drugs and that would be awful." She pulls almost a cartoon sad face and she reminds me of some of the awful places she's been to.
"I know for a fact that heaven and hell are here on earth." She talks with perfect recall about a vision, a dream she had during a 'suicide attempt' in 1969. It was soon after she'd miscarried Mick Jagger's child at seven and a half months; not long after the death of Brian Jones, luminous original driving force of the Stones. The Rolling Stones had just done a concert in Hyde Park and then Marianne got on a plane with Jagger to Sydney.
"It was a vision I had after I'd taken 150 Tuinols. I didn't intend to take so many, I just kept taking them on the flight and I remember taking a whole load more after I ordered hot chocolate on room service. I wasn't dead, I was walking along in no man's land with Brian Jones and he said 'this is where I go' and he fell off the edge of the abyss and I didn't, I had to walk all the way back again, and I walked a very long way. I was in an airport and there were planes coming in and taking off and I said I'm waiting for Mick to come and get me, which indeed he did, he brought me back. I remember it all. It was after that that we wrote Wild Horses."
Keith Richards in his book Life is very kind to Marianne crediting her talent as being an über muse, not just inspiring songs but helping Jagger write the lyrics. "It wasn't that I wrote whole songs, but I'd be 'what about this line, what about changing that' and he loved it. He wouldn't have loved it if I'd tried to claim credit or money, he wouldn't have liked that, ha, ha. And it would have been unfair because he's the star, along with Keith.
Richards is kind enough to demystify the Mars bar incident once and for all. It never happened. It's something that humiliated her at the time and has haunted her. "His book makes wonderful reading and he writes about the big stuff. I love and adore him."
Reading it I wondered why didn't she choose him over Mick. "Oh I would have done, but he was having a scene with Linda Keith and he was already in love with Anita, so no chance."
Really? "You don't know how silly a girl I was. He loved me all along but I didn't know that. We'll never know really. I was definitely mad about him. I spent one lovely night with him and got to know him later. The more I saw him the more I loved him. People have said we would have been so good together. I was too young to hold his attention."
She was a teenager when she was first introduced to the court of the Rolling Stones, but she wasn't exactly an ingénue. In 1965 when she was 18 she married artist John Dunbar and had a son, Nicholas. She left Dunbar for Jagger when she was 19. Long golden hair, big eyes, floral tiny mini dress, it's a classic image of sixties beautiful person who was also known as an 'angel with tits'. From the outside she had everything, even a sweet little hit record, As Tears Go By. She felt constantly displaced. She'd been intending to go to university or drama school and here she was, part of a circus. She felt undermined and had no confidence.
"I couldn't even give a blow job. People care about that. Not that Keith cared. He's a real man. But one of those things about being in that world…" she doesn't finish the sentence. "I have never been able to give a good blow job, I would have been sick. I've always felt rather inferior. Keith didn't care. We had such a great night. Wow, I'll never forget that. I certainly did not have to give him a blow job. It was hot and sweaty.
"But I also had a great time with Mick, in bed and out of bed." In her autobiography Faithfull she recalls that for months she and Jagger slept on opposite sides of a gigantic bed avoiding sex.
"The other bits were fabulous. We used to go out visiting sacred places, chapels on lonely hills. Keith would drive the Bentley with Christopher Gibbs and sometimes Michael Cooper took pictures. He was the court photographer there are pictures of me and Mick in the car having a row. You can see just how cross we were. We weren't always having fun but we did have good times, it was a very creative relationship. He was very good at playing Three Sisters to help me learn my lines. He was a nice Hamlet too." It was when she played Ophelia she started to think in a suicidal frame of mind and soon after she took all the pills with the hot chocolate.
She and Jagger had scant contact over the years but when she had her lumpectomy in 2006 he called her. "And that meant a lot. I was so lucky that they caught it so quickly. I didn't have to have chemo. They got rid of it with a lumpectomy. I had a breast lift and a little bit of diminuation at the same time. Might as well make the best of it, that's what I said to myself." Who would have thought she was such a positive thinker. Essentially she is. It's a strength that she sees in herself now perhaps for the first time.
She's wearing a man's tuxedo and a white ruffled blouse. Her breasts are still enormous. She says "they have grown back. I have lots of friends who are going through chemo now. I hope that when I die it's not going to be frightening like that but I'll just be in my bed and think I've had enough, I'll fuck off now."
She was afraid, of course, when she had cancer. "Maybe not as afraid as I should have been. All I can say is I've been lucky with body. Well done little body. I praise it and say you're very good."
She does think that the cancer changed her. That after it her love life could never be the same. "Cancer doesn't make you feel sexy. It took me a long time to get over it. I went right off sex and that was a difficult moment because when I felt better again Francois had fallen in love with someone else." Francois Ravard looks like a love child of Serge Gainsbourg and Woody Allen. He is her long time manager and remains so. "Yes, he looks after me," she purrs. But it took her a while to get over the break-up. She wrote the song Why Did We Have To Part about him.
"In a way it's about everybody I've parted from, but specifically Francois. It was hard to write. During the break-up I had writers block. I couldn't write anything for two years. In AA I heard about somebody in the film business who retired, then they started drinking again because they let go. I couldn't let that happen. But I'm well and strong and I'm loving working."
She still lives in Paris and has a house in County Waterford, Ireland. Her son Nicholas wants her to move back to London. "He's such a cool son, he's perfect for me. I don't know if he'd suit any other mother but he's very free thinking. He's a high finance journalist and he's written a wonderful book, The Devil's Derivative. How did this happen to me, how did I get a child like this. He's very much like my father."
Her father Major Glyn Faithfull was a spy in World War II who never got caught. Her grandfather invented a sexual device called Frigidity Machine which was designed to give women orgasms. He tried it out on her mother Eva, Baroness Erisso, a dancer and actress descended from the Sacher-Masoch long line of Austro-Hungarian aristocrats.
"I always thought he was a fraud. Why would he do that to his son's new wife? But I don't think my mother was very into sex and my father was very into it. So that was difficult for both of them."
She talks more about her adoration of Nicholas. Perhaps the relationship is more intense because he was taken away from her when he was a child and she was a heroin addict living on the streets of Soho. "No, I was always around him, but yes, he was taken away from me, and that was very painful, no question. He was about seven. I've actually blocked it out now. Let's not talk about it, it's too horrible and I love John again even though he did that to me. It's been years since I hated John," she says all drawn out and languid. You get the sense she loves an audience.
What drove her to living on the streets? "I didn't like living in the goldfish bowl." Yet she loves applause. Another paradox.
"When I fell in love with Mick because I couldn't get Keith the band were just like any other band. I hadn't signed up for this incredible leap in their popularity. They became superstars and I was in the middle of it. It was me who separated from Mick and not the other way round. It was me that separated from him and maybe from myself. I abandoned Mick and then I abandoned me. I left me lying in the road, anorexic and shooting up heroin. Heroin does make you lose interest in food but it was more than that. I wanted to disappear completely, get smaller and smaller and go down the plughole. But a part of me hung on to the love and the light. My mother's love was strong and that part helped, the part of me that did want to make it. Why did I take those pills in the first place? I can't remember exactly."
Was it the end of your relationship with Mick Jagger? "No, but it hurried up the end. It's very bad form to try and kill yourself when you're with Mick Jagger and it's all about the pretty stuff."
Enormous orbital eyes look like they suddenly have another vision. "It was because of Brian's death. That's why I did it. I was going to punish Mick by killing myself. Mick didn't kill Brian. I never thought that, but neither Mick nor Keith helped out Brian. They laughed and mocked and pointed. So I thought I'll punish them all, fuck 'em. I'll show them, they'll learn, they'll miss me. But it wasn't to be."
She's relaxed now and tells me how she loves to speak French with a strong English accent. She demonstrates and dissolves into giggles. Says she doesn't speak real French at all and they find it incredibly charming.
She has returned to acting playing with Jonathan Rhys Meyers in the movie Belle de Seigneur. "I love making people laugh. I love performing. The best acting I do is in my life, not just on stage or film." Is she acting now? "I'm not at the moment or if I am this is a virtuoso performance. A few years ago I might have got acting and being confused."
She always said her homelessness was of her own doing. She wanted to be anonymous so she acted homelessness and drug addiction. Another bizarre paradox that she was in control of being out of control. "I have come to terms with the past. I took it personally and was too insecure and defensive. If you asked me a difficult question I'd get hurt and punish you all myself. And now it doesn't matter."
There's certainly joy, even in the most bleak song on Horses And High Heels. You can sense her joy in working through the pain. There's a real lust for life. She thinks for a long time she has been denying herself love. Of all her marriages, three of them, to punk rocker Ben Brierley in 1999 and writer Georgio Della Terza in 1988, she is only in touch with the first husband, Dunbar.
"I want to keep an open mind about love. Do you think there are some people out there that might love me?"

Matt Damon looks like he hasn't had any sleep. Probably hasn't. We meet in New York just a few days after his wife Luciana Barroso has given birth to their third daughter together Stella.
He is wearing a grey beanie hat, he hasn't shaved, a thick grey sweatshirt and heavy jeans and boots. A thick silver wedding band his only jewellery.
"This is my guy just had a baby look. I have changed since then. I showered. Took the kids to school and made it here today. They love the new Stella. I've got pictures uploaded of the kids holding her."
Can I see? "Are you asking a dad if you can see pictures of his kids? Sure," he purrs. We are here to talk about his new movie Adjustment Bureau - a fantastical romance. It's part science fiction, part love story. But first we look at the pictures of his family on his phone. On one of them his four-year-old Isabella is holding the new baby and looking very proud. "She looks so excited in that picture. It's awesome."
I wonder if ten years ago he had this vision of himself - happy father at 40, content in his personal life, the most bankable actor alive and the most sought after one. It's hard to imagine that it wasn't always like that and ten years ago he was worried that after two movies had been commercial failures, Bagger Vance and All The Pretty Horses, he feared a third one would wreck his future on the A-list.
"It's interesting. Ten years ago Bush was about to steal the election and I was in Paris shooting The Bourne Identity, a movie that would change this whole decade in a huge way. I was very focused on making the movie. In that way I haven't changed at all if I'm working on a part. So that feels the same."
Did he really feel that it was three strikes and you're out? "Yes, Bagger Vance and All The Pretty Horses were just coming out and I was acutely aware that I had to do something. I don't apologise for those movies. I know why I made them, but more so now you're really aware of where you are in this business. I think turning 30 there was so much in my life that was unresolved, but turning 40 I didn't feel anything, there wasn't a hiccup. I felt wonderful to have an amazing and beautiful wife and children and from a work perspective things going really well.
"Forties is a great time for men in the business, much tougher for women. But from my perspective it was an occasion to celebrate."
The thirties weren't just a time of uncertainty in his career. Emotionally they were unsettling too. "I knew intellectually that I wanted to have kids and move on with my life but I couldn't really imagine it. I just hadn't met her yet and I was extremely aware of that."
Now contentment and love glow seeps from his every pore. How has he learnt to balance the level of work he does with down time with his family? "On the one hand I'm most excited and most alive when I'm working on something I love. That feels great. But not to the detriment of my family. I try to have my cake and eat it. For instance working with Clint, he'll shoot an eight or ten hour day. Which is the regular hours most parents go to work. And I feel it's a great creative experience and then I'm home with my kids and have a good time with them."
Last year he made the movie Hereafter directed by Clint Eastwood where he played the part of a medium. Did he visit a medium to get in to that part? "No. if I had a line into someone who I'd heard was great I would have done but I didn't want to go down the rabbit hole of pretenders. This guy's relationship is with people on earth and his loneliness. That yearning to have a real connection with another person. So that part was much easier to get into."
Has he experienced that kind of loneliness and looking for that connection? "I had other relationships that were meaningful and I was very busy so I don't think I was ever deeply lonely. In retrospect having the wife that I do and the life that I do and the children I can't imagine living in any other way. But I didn't feel the absence of that because I didn't know what it was."
His character in his new film Adjustment Bureau is a politician who fights his alleged predetermined destiny. He is prepared to risk everything for love. Would he? "Would I risk everything? If you ask most parents a choice between their career and their family I don't think there's much of a choice at all."
One of the movie's themes questions, is all of life predestined or do you have a chance to make your own destiny? What does he really think? "I am responsible for my life and the decisions I make. Or is it a predetermined course that no matter what I do I'll be going down? This guy is shown a glimpse of that but he defies it and says he will live with the consequences. It's like defying Greek gods.
"But do I believe in fate? There are so many things I feel lucky about but at the same time I'm a hard worker and I don't like to think I didn't earn anything in my life."
But does he believe that certain things are meant to be and certain couples are meant to be together? "In the movie I meet Emily Blunt's character - I catch the bus I wasn't supposed to catch, and then the higher powers explain the ground rules. I met a girl I'm not supposed to be with but I'm really smitten with this girl and I feel like we're really meant to be together."
Is that how he felt about his wife, it was meant to be? "If there is a plan I'm happy with the plan. I feel they've intervened on my behalf in a good way. There's an incredible series of events that took me to meet my wife. When I think of the impact of Lucy on my life and the kids because of a chance meeting.
"The Farrelly brothers were planning to shoot in Hawaii. At the last minute it changed to Miami. If I hadn't have been in Miami I would never have met her."
There's a scene in the movie where there's a 'Do I know you?' moment. When he meets Emily Blunt for the first time it's as if he already knows her. Was that like it was with Lucy? Did you feel you already knew her? "Yes, not unlike that. I don't know if it's me eight years later reimagining it. But I do definitely remember feeling that way." He nods savouring the moment. And he looks directly at me. He really lets you in.
What has he learnt from living with so many females? "I've learnt that we are a completely different species. If one of my friends brings his son over instantly the boy will start playing with a toy in a different way. They'll smash it against the wall or do some boy thing that I'll totally relate to and the girls don't do that. In terms of discipline my wife's much better at it. If I had a boy I'd be better at disciplining the boy because I understand boys.
"When my four year old was 18 months she was trying to get a treat out of me. I said no and she asked me again and I caved in, and then my wife came into the room and said 'Isabella' and Isabella looked up at her mother, shyly smiled and put her head down and I realised that at 18 months old this creature had total control over me. Then I realised men don't have a chance. I feel we're such a different species. I am flummoxed by my female counterpart at 18 months old."
His mother features heavily in his life. Nancy Carlsson-Paige - is an author and college professor who lectures in child psychology . She instilled in him a strong work ethic and encouraged his political awareness.
"I never knew my parents as a couple. They divorced 38 years ago when I was two. They are strong individuals and both present in my life. My mum's name comes up a lot because she's a professor of childhood education and people are always asking me if I'm of my mother's opinion."
That said his mother comes over as the stronger character. Does he go for a woman who is strong and can take care of herself? "There was something appealing about my wife and that was she didn't need me. I love that she's strong. Strength is a wonderful quality for my daughters to see in the most important woman in their life.
"I expect a lot from my daughters. We're going to parent them as much as we can and hope they are going to contribute to the community. Our 12-year-old (Alexia is Luciana's daughter from a previous marriage who he has legally adopted her) is a fantastic writer. But their choices are for them to make. There are plenty of ways to get to heaven."
Does he think there's a heaven? "I hope so but there's no way to know till you go up."
What's heaven on earth? "I love to be with my family, I love to be with my friends, I love my job. You have to figure how to make the peace and work with your friends and bring your family. My oldest kid and I have been writing a script together based on an idea she had. We'll see if it's something she wants to pursue."
Are you still hoping to have a boy? "No, I still hope to have a marriage. It's a whole different energy being surrounded by women. I am getting a new perspective on the world that I would have missed if I'd had boys
Traditionally women are meant to be better at compartmentalizing. Has he found that? "Not true for me and my wife. We are both better at doing one thing at a time. We get lost when we have a bunch of things, although she's better at staying on top of it. I can only do one project at a time. It causes me a lot of anxiety if I'm under pressure in one particular project because it feels very natural to be working out all the problems of that project. There's a lot of pressure. The day is costing $500,000 and we have to get through that day. And if you say you have to call some people about this and that I am hopeless."
It's hard to imagine him being so anxious - he comes across calm, gentle and grounded How does he keep his own life in the glare of Hollywood?
"It's about not tying your identity to what the business thinks of you. If I fall off that list again I'll just do what Ben did and find a project and write. We did it with Good Will Hunting out of nowhere. If you want to panic about what people think of you in Hollywood you're not going to get anywhere. If you know how to write and tell a story you'll never be replaced. Ben never panicked and he never demanded any kind of status. He was just one of the guys, I'm not doing this, I'll do this. And it turns out he is a great director."
He says he is still hoping to direct one day but hasn't found the right project yet - and he has not slipped from that list so may not find the time either.
What has he learnt about love in the past ten years? "Well I met my wife so everything. The whole world has opened up."
What has he learned about clothes? "That my wife should dress me.
What has he learned about directors ? He's known for having special bonds with people like Clint Eastwood and Paul Greengrass and with wanting work with them as often as possible "That there's a way to do this job and have fun, enjoy this life and not torture yourself."
What have you learned about your friends? "That it's tough to keep up with everyone because we've all got families. I've learnt that I want to do a better job in my forties than my thirties about being in touch."
What has he learnt about taking care of himself, health regimes? "I exercise better than I used to. I have trouble cutting out all the food that I like. Now I have to start getting ready for movies by preparing earlier. I love food and lots of it, and wine and beer. I could eat a ten course meal pretty much every night if you let me.
"There's a great philosopher who on her death bed said she would have done three things differently. She would have been nicer to everybody. She would have cared less about what people thought of her, and would have eaten more ice cream. I don't want to leave this planet thinking that you could have eaten more ice cream."

What's not to love about Michael Sheen? He's a little bit sharp, a little bit funny, a little bit volatile, hugely charismatic. He's been called a muted alpha male and the most exciting actor of his generation.

He certainly acts everything off the 3D screen in Tron where he plays a nightclub host in another dimension. He's a little bit Ziggy Stardust in his platinum spiky hair. He's all louche and showy and you feel you can touch the very texture of him, and it's not just the 3D glasses.

Tron: Legacy is a sequel to the original Tron released in 1982. At the time it was groundbreaking in its hi-techiness, pioneering the use of computer graphics and virtual sets and blending live action with animation. It became a cult classic.

Today's Tron is a technological carnival. Going to the movie is like being in a giant game with a bit of father son story in the mix. I can't imagine that it won't be huge.

We perhaps mostly think of Sheen as a virtuoso in the portrayal of real life characters. He's been Kenneth Williams in Fantabulosa!, David Frost in Frost/Nixon, Brian Clough in The Damned United and Tony Blair in The Deal, The Queen, and The Special Relationship. But he also has a penchant for crazy vampire movies. He's been in The Twilight Saga and Underworld. And he's coming up in a whole slew of other movies where he plays neither a vampire or a well known figure. A huge terrain.

He's now 41and I notice an air of confidence I haven't seen before. We meet in a Beverly Hills hotel room. He's wearing a well cut slate grey suit. He has big orbital eyes, dark curls and thinly striped yellow and maroon socks. The socks possibly a small statement of flamboyance or rebellion under control.

You don't look 40? "I don't mind if I do. There's nothing wrong with looking 40," he says just a touch defensively. I tell him I was trying to compliment him. Who doesn't want to look younger? He smiles a kind of frozen smile, a suspicious smile.

I tell him I just spoke to another actor who is 40 who told me he thought the forties were the greatest decade for a male actor, although obviously not for women. "I think it depends what kind of an actor. Not if you're a leading man of action. The thirties is better isn't it." I wanted to say it was Matt Damon, who's had probably the most successful thirties leading man of action career but thinks the forties are better, but I didn't want to make him even more defensive.

"I think you get to that point around that age where you go this isn't a rehearsal. If I want to do something and I have the opportunity then I should do it. I'm 40 and because of the success I've had over the past few years it opens a lot of doors for me in other directions. I've always wanted to do other things like write and direct, I feel things have come together, my desire to do it and the opportunity."

He moved to Los Angeles to be closer to his daughter, aged 11, with his ex-partner Kate Beckinsale. He told me once that he led a very Spartan existence, similar to Kenneth Williams. But surely that must have changed along with his acclaim and success? "No. when I'm not working it's quite simple. I don't do the whole LA nightlife thing. I enjoy being at home, being with my daughter, and simple pleasures. I'm here for Lily. If Lily wasn't living here I wouldn't be. But having lived here for eight years I've got used to it. I've made it my own and work options have increased for me, so that's changed.

"Ironically the busier I am the less time I spend here because I go away for the work. I shot New Moon in Vancouver and within a couple of weeks was doing Tron, also in Vancouver."

Did he base his character on anybody? "It's a guy who runs a nightclub who is a performer who uses multi personalities as a smoke screen, so there's Ziggy in there, there's a bit of Joel Grey from Cabaret and a bit of Frank-N-Furter from the Rocky Horror Show. I like the idea of being a popular culture jukebox of all of these things. Castor, he assimilates everything like a sponge, and it all pops out at different times of the day."

Was he a fan of the first Tron? "A massive fan. I was 12 when I went to see it. My uncle took me because he was babysitting that day. I came out and my world changed. It was the first time a film had transported me in that way, took me to a different world. And when I came out of the cinema in Neath on a cold rainy day in South Wales the world looked different. It gave me a sense of what was possible in cinema. It gave me a very emotional relationship to the film and it gave me a sense of this is what I want to do. I want to be involved in something… where the lights go down, everything is a possibility and you are open to be affected by what you are about to witness. It shows you the magic and all of the romance of the cinema. I got all that from watching that film."

I was picturing the 12-year-old Sheen who at the time had just been offered a place with the under-13s at Arsenal. But his father had not wanted to uproot the family. I was wondering if he was becoming more interested in a career in acting anyway given that his world was changed by going to see Tron. He looks irritated. "It would be very neat but it wasn't that way. Life isn't neat." And then he counters, "I suppose I try to put as much nuance in my work as possible. My relationship with what I do has changed. I get edited and directed and there's no use in worrying about the things you have no control over."

Does he mean he's become more sanguine? "No, I don't mean that. I mean I look at my role as serving the story, becoming more sanguine means you accept something you don't want to accept. My focus is more about making each moment inhabited and full and complex and as layered as possible. Each moment has to have the DNA."

Is it easier to define DNA when you're playing a real life character? "I've always done that instinctively. What is the essential conflict of that character? My Blair or my Frost or my Clough is a mixture of the real person and what is required of the character to tell the story, and the character Peter Morgan created in the script. I suppose when you play a real life person it's more tempting to think it's just that person, but it's not."

As he's played Blair three times people always link him to Blair. They meet him and they think 'Oh, he's not like Tony Blair at all.' "That's nothing to do with me," he says sharply, grimly, coldly. "I've always done a whole range of things. It's that desire for neatness that fits me in that box of playing real people. I've done a whole mixture."

Yes, but he's played Blair more than anyone else has? And I read that Peter Morgan is thinking of writing another script about Blair during the Iraq crisis and his popularity waning. "I certainly haven't been talking to anyone. Three is enough for me. It's not a soap opera."

We steer into the territory of other projects. He has got Beautiful Boy, an independent film about a young man that does a Colombine style shooting and then kills himself. Jesus Henry Christ with Toni Collette, a child genius goes looking for his biological father. Sheen is the father. And next Easter he plans to put on a version of a passion play in his home town of Port Talbot. Many world class actors have haled from Port Talbot: Richard Burton, Anthony Hopkins… "Anthony Hopkins won't be in it. Rob Brydon hopefully will. It's a piece that's been specially devised using the town as a performance base with a continuous story over three days. Very exciting. And at the end of next year I'll be doing Hamlet at the Young Vic directed by Ian Nixon."

Is that something he's excited by or daunted by? "I wouldn't be doing it if I wasn't excited." I am sure his Hamlet will be very charismatic and perhaps a watershed moment, although Sheen isn't keen on those because they're not nuanced enough. "I love acting and I want to continue, but I want to have a hand in the storytelling aspect as well."

I've no doubt that Sheen is a brilliant writer. He's emotionally articulate and has an analytical mind.

What sort of projects are you working on? "I am not going to say?" Are you still planning to write something about the controversial critic and director Kenneth Tynan? A pause. Perhaps he forgot he told me that a few years ago when he was a less wary man. "Yes, that's an ongoing thing. Just one of the projects." And he just worked with Woody Allen. What kind of director was he, very specific or relaxed? "A mixture. Sometimes he can be incredibly specific. He'll say leave a pause there because he understands rhythm. And in some ways he's very hands off and lets you take the lead because he likes you to be very natural. It was a good lesson in don't try too hard, let it be. I play an American who is on holiday in Paris who meets the main character and thinks he knows everything."

I read that he met Rachel McAdams on that movie and they are now together. "I'm not going to talk about that," he says quick as a bullet. A pause. But is it true? "I know you have to ask, but I'm not going to talk about it." Something inside of me winced at the patronising I know you have to ask as if it placed us clearly on opposite sides, us and them, enemy and victim. I don't enjoy doing interviews from this position. I particularly don't enjoy it when in the past every time I've met Sheen he's been more than personable, warm, open. Damn, I even thought he liked me. So because I'm the enemy I persist. So he's happy then? "I'm happy in my life. Yes." A PR from the corner of the room: "He's not going to talk about his private life." Sheen continues. "I'm not going to talk about that because that's private."I had no idea negotiating the territory called Rachel would be so precarious. There's lots of paparazzi pictures of them holding hands and looking cosy. McAdams is a feisty Canadian. Her Hollywood debut was in the film Mean Girls. More recently she was glamorous and seductive in Guy Richie's Sherlock Holmes and is currently enjoying Hollywood hitdom opposite Harrison Ford in Morning Glory.

She's outspoken, rebellious, allegedly turned down a recent Vanity Fair Hollywood cover alongside Scarlett Johansson and Keira Knightley. Allegedly, when she realised she had to be naked she walked out of the shoot. I imagine she's challenging to be with and that's just the kind of discomfort Sheen seems to enjoy. Also when her hair was dark she was not unlike his ex Kate Beckinsale.

Up until a few months ago he had been with ballet dancer Lorraine Stewart for five years. She was London based, so perhaps the transatlantic emotional upkeep was too challenging. But who knows.

I remember him being heartfelt and honest about his split from Beckinsale. At the time he said, "By the time you are 30 you are still trying to make your 15-year-old self happy but you are a different person. You need to be brave and let go of that because they're not your dreams any more, they're someone else's. I need a new set of things to make me happy and I need to go for those. That was definitely part of what was happening with me and Kate and we are both brave enough to say this isn't making us happy any more."

Last time we met was when I did a Radio 2 show called My Life In Movies - like Desert Island Discs but with movies. One of his top films was Apocalypse Now, so I tell him I just met Martin Sheen who told me about his alcoholic rages that were real life and not necessarily acting. Sheen is impressed. He has a huge soul and passion and a deep sense of injustice that ties in with anger and rage. It's a deep well of feeling. I was always aware of that in him.

I wonder if he identifies with the other Sheen. I tell him I've always thought he had some deep wells going on. "I guess so." And a bad temper? "I think less so now."

I was surprised to read that on the set of The Golden Bowl he hit the actor Jeremy Northam. Allegedly he had insulted Beckinsale. "I hope it's not indiscriminate rage. I always feel it's justified." But hitting someone? "Oh, that was a long time ago. If I feel there is a situation where somebody is being very badly behaved or out of control or upsetting people needlessly then I don't hold back. I try to sort that out, but that happens less and less."

Why does he think that is? "Maybe I'm not in a situation where that's happening. I think it comes out of a protective thing more than anything. I think as you grow older you get mellowed and 'm better at picking up on situations earlier on down the line and finding more economical ways of dealing with them, which is to notice when one is starting to occur and doing something about it earlier down the line before it gets messy. Also I think I'm getting less cranky.

"I think being a parent changes that. You can't go flying off the handle all the time. You have to learn to be patient and tolerant. You have to learn how to collaborate with people better in order to work with them better, to get the best out of each other. You can't just walk away and you can't just shout. It's about people accepting your flaws as much as you accepting theirs. It's about having humility and accepting you are a flawed person.

"I've found when I'm able to do that things tend to work better. I'm a flawed human being but I don't hit anyone any more. I haven't hit anyone for a long time."

When was the last time he got angry and what was that about? "I'll have to get back to you on that one… It could be the Burmese lady who's been incarcerated. I got very upset about that whole situation. It's great she's been released."

Did you cry with joy when she was released? "No, but I was greatly joyful." I had him down as a man who cries easily. "Yes, I do. I cry when I feel moved by incredible generosity or connection to someone or feel great happiness or love. It might be something or someone inspires that in me. I can get moved to tears with whatever you feel connected to. I get moved by the connection. You can be connected in grief or sadness, but it's the connection because we spend so much of our lives being separated. I don't think it's the happiness or sadness that makes you cry, it's the connection. It's the relief of connection that produces the tears. What we recognise in stories in actors performance is the moment you are able to connect with what they are portraying. Maybe I've been concerned that maybe this thing separates me from people but by that person portraying it I feel suddenly connected and I don't feel as separate. That's something I'm always looking to do in a lot of the work that I do, that's why I play characters who are outsiders or extreme or have something going on that makes them feel separate and isolated. Somehow connecting with them offers the audience to connect with them as well."

Does he think he might feel more separate and isolated than other people? "No, it's the human condition. That's what it's like to be alive. That's why mental illness has always interested me. I think you can sometimes get caught up in what's going on in your head and living with a physical disability or anything that's tabooed or marginalised or feel alienated is something I'm very drawn to."

Does he spend a lot of time in his own head? "I'm a fairly thoughtful person, quite an analytical one. That's what I like about being busy. It requires you to work with other people and to be active. I like to find a balance between being reflective and analytical. So much of what you do can be very self obsessed and not related to the world as it really is. So finding the balance is important to me."

Obsessive, mm? Does that mean your shoes are all colour co-ordinated? "Not obsessive in that kind of way." Of course he's not.

What does he like to do outside of work that fulfils him and makes him happy? "I don't see a value(?) between work and life. I've always been very fortunate to have a career and earn money through doing the things I like. I don't see it as just a job, so the boundary is quite blurred for me. So if someone watched me in my life they might not see a huge difference between what they consider work. It's just not work for me. I love to read and think about how I can manifest what I care about and think about what moves me and explore it, which is another way to describe it as work obviously I love being with my daughter and spending time with her and friends and family."

He is renowned for having a friendly relationship with Beckinsale and even though it's been over seven years since they split they always like to go trick or treating together at Hallowe'en with her husband, director Len Wiseman. Wiseman directed the film Underworld, which was when Beckinsale met him. Sheen has said though that nothing went on behind his back.

"This year I was Edgar Allen Poe. Lily was a 1930s usherette and Kate and Len were Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein and we all went out trick or treating."

Does he ever switch off? "I don't know what switch off means. That means death doesn't it?" But if you mean can I give myself and lose myself in something as an audience member, yes I love that. But I don't call it switching off."

Does he lose himself in a character in the same way if it's one he's created and one that people think they know? "It's the same ability to let go of something inside and completely give yourself to whatever you're doing at the time. That's why I love watching films and reading books and I think that's related to it and I hope the way that I work. Don't they say that yoga has a quality of relaxation that's sustaining and nourishing, about being able to let go of yourself?"

His father is a professional Jack Nicholson impersonator? Does he throw himself into that? "Oh he throws himself into everything, yes. But there's a difference between letting go and losing yourself and committing yourself to something. My dad commits himself to things in a big way. I admire that about him. I've got a version of that from him and from my mum I've got a kind of sensitivity. My dad's not much of a reader, he's a doer. My mum's more reflective. She's written poetry, so I suppose I got that from her."

His great grandmother on his father's side was a lion tamer and recently he did a television show in Wales called Coming Home, the Welsh version of Who Do You Think You Are? Where he got to uncover other ancestors. "My great great grandmother worked for a guy called Frank Boss who had a travelling wild beast show and went to New York and California. She was an elephant trainer as well as a lion tamer. But I also looked at other parts of the family that I didn't know anything about - our family came over from Ireland originally during the famine to a small Catholic area in Cardiff. A young man and a young woman got married in Wales and I was shown the birth and death certificates of their 28 children, about 22 of which died. They had three separate boys who they called Michael. Three separate Michael Sheens all of whom died. None of the Michaels survived and they really wanted a Michael Sheen and I didn't see another Michael until me."

Somehow this sad story is making me cry even though a few minutes ago I'd have been quite happy to kill one of the Michael Sheens myself.

Last year Decca Records asked me to help them on their search to find a supergroup of singing nuns. I'm not really sure what qualified me for that particular job - perhaps because I got on very well with a group of Austrian monks who sang Gregorian chant and sold over a million records worldwide.
I was tortured by nuns at convent school and I've always had a fascination with them; a lifelong quest to find a different experience. Plus, who isn't fascinated by a woman who has given up every essence of herself for God and lives in such an extreme way, cloistered in a habit among her sisters?
The search was long and fascinating and it answered my questions. Are nuns authoratitive and frightening? Or are they beatific and enlightening? Each community is startlingly different.
It took in over 70 convents in 15 countries (including Ireland, Spain, Wales, USA). The first thing we learnt was that nuns are extremely difficult to get hold of because their lives don't revolve around everyday deadlines, and a lucrative recording contract seemed not to be of great importance.
First off we visited a remote order of Benedectines at Abbaye Notre Dame de L'Annonciation d