Alison Goldfrapp is a pop icon who's influenced everyone from Kylie to Madonna, as you well know. We met this very pleasant, very passionate and very sweary lady in London to discuss, over tea and biscuits, Brit School breeding, rock star cliches, Duffy, women's magazines, terrible interviews and what it's like to be asked about shoes for almost 10 years.

Let's start with a big state of the music industry question. Is it more about getting your song on an advert now than album sales?

We've always relied on stuff like adverts because nobody wanted to play our stuff on the radio at all. They've only recently started doing that. So for us, having music on an ad was a way of paying the rent, and a way for people to hear our music. This album, bizarrely, and much to our surprise, is doing better than any of our albums. We're actually selling more records than we did before, which is quite strange, because I thought no one was going to fucking listen to it.

And the internet...

It's fantastic, in a way, that people are able to discover music that they would never discover before, because radio and television would decide what you were going to listen to, so the access to all kinds of music is wonderful. But then on the other hand, it does make you wonder, unless you've been to Brit School, how the fuck you'll have any sort of career in music.

What is it about all these pop stars coming from the Brit School?

Well it's like breeding, isn't it? It's breeding what will be the next big thing. Great, we've had Amy Winehouse, so now let's have 10 of them, and we'll train them up. That's essentially what Duffy is. I think she's got an amazing voice but essentially she's been trained to sound and be like that. It wasn't some crazy idea she had. It was a business plan. Ultimately, if you're talented then it doesn't really matter, but I suppose what it does is breed, whereas it would be nice to have a few runts around.

There's a class thing now, too. It's about having money.

Well yeah. It's like any kind of education, isn't it? When I went to art school, I was just good at art. I didn't have any qualifications whatsoever, none, and I was the dunce, considered thick, nothing was going to happen for me. And I got in because they thought I was good at art. Whereas now, one, you've got to have a shitload of money, and two, you need to have a million exams which probably aren't even related to that anyway. It seems a bit mental.

It's the same with university places.

That's wrong. It's just really wrong. There you are, politics! Although I do know someone who has fuck all money, and their kid's just got a scholarship to go to Brit School, purely on their talent. But the other thing is, that's young. They're 14. I quite like it when people are a bit more lived in, I think. You do wonder where those songs come from. But some people have wisdom beyond their years. Kate Bush was 14 when she wrote Man With The Child In His Eyes... fucking hell.

You've got Laura Marling now who's 18.

And neither of them went to Brit School. Maybe it's a fucking good thing they didn't! God knows what they'd be doing.

These young female pop stars get a lot of stick in the press, though.

It's a weird one, isn't it? That has crossed my mind on occasion. I suppose it's hard to think about without thinking about a whole load of other issues as well. Like the tradition of "rock star" - what's his face, Babyshambles? - classic, fucked up, takes drugs, he must be a genius. That really winds me up because he's read some books on poetry, so therefore he must be a fucking genius? Whereas the girls, they're just troubled. There's a slightly different criteria, somehow. They certainly don't get called a genius if they've read some books. It's just the old cliche, isn't it? He's a genius because he took some drugs and read some books.

How do you feel you've been treated by the press? You're coveted by music magazines, women's magazines, style magazines... I just found an interview you did with a glossy, shall I read you a question?

Well I don't read any press, so go on.

"You're known as a horse-tailed stage dominatrix. How does your new folky sound translate in the wardrobe department?"

What did I say back? I didn't say fuck off, did I?

You were pleasant. You just said you'd been advised not to wear heels.

I can't imagine me being that polite because I did actually get quite sick of doing those kind of interviews. I was sick of people asking me about my fucking shoes and not asking me about music. I had invented this image of myself that I got really bored of. I was quite naive about it and thought people wouldn't take it so bloody seriously. As soon as you start feeling like someone's labelling you a horse-tail-wearing dominatrix, you start thinking, well hold on a minute... I think I felt trapped in this thing that I'd invented. It wasn't about music any more. I just thought, fuck, I'm really bored of this.

There was an interview with Adele in a women's mag that was all about her weight.

I just find reading women's magazines... well I don't read them, actually, because most of the time they are really depressing. Because it's women writing about other women, about how they should look, about how they shouldn't look, whether they're too fat, too thin, fucking hell, it's so boring. It's mindless bollocks. I'm not interested in whether Adele's fucking fat or thin. It's horrible. Once you start the ball rolling, you don't care so long as there's someone you can rip apart. I can't bear it.

I don't want to sound rude...

Go on then!

...but you've got a reputation, in terms of interviews, for not taking any nonsense. Have you mellowed?

I probably have. I'm a bit more relaxed. When we first started, particularly, I was much more nervous. This is the advantage of going to Brit School probably - somebody tells you what an interview is, and why you're doing it. It took a good few years to work out how to deal with it. When Will and I used to do interviews together - though it's not really like that any more - quite often they would talk to Will and say, music music music. And turn to me and say, "that's a lovely pair of shoes". And that's when I'd be sitting there going, for fuck's sake! What the fuck... you know. I'd get irritated.

What's the worst experience you've had?

We did this radio interview in France. The bloke was talking to Will about music and eventually turned to me and says [French accent], "So Alison, you are very sexy, very feminine, and today we see you are not." I was like, WHAT? I immediately laid into him and said "What the fuck are you talking about?" There was this panic going on around the room and then he carried on talking to Will about music. I was sitting there fuming. After five minutes of talking to Will about knobs he turned to me again and said, "That's a very pretty dress you have on, Alison". So I was like, right, you're a fucking arsehole, aren't you?

When was the last time you lost it?

Well I have to say I wasn't that kind to a gentleman earlier today, only because it was very obvious he'd done all his research on the internet and had read all my answers to the questions, so his questions just had my answers in them. If you know the fucking answers, why they fuck are you asking me them? I could go on about this for hours!

Go ahead...

Some journalists have an angle, and sometimes you don't fit into what they expect you to be like or answer what they wanted you to answer, so they get a bit arsey and think, she's a bit bolshy and awkward. That's what usually happens! But then I think women do get called bolshy and awkward if you're not grinning, everything's wonderful, Kylie Minogue. Guys get, "they're strong and they know what they want". Girls get, "She's difficult, isn't she?" Sometimes you do have to be a bit fucking stroppy and difficult or else people don't fucking listen to you. There are always people telling you you can't do what you want to, and actually you fucking can. Otherwise nowt happens, you know.