‘It’s so cute to see Prince Harry happy ... I’m still waiting for my invite to sing at the wedding’

Rita Ora can’t decide if turning 27 means she’s still an ingenue or approaching pension age. “I don’t know how to feel about it,” she says, mock-anguished. “I am young — but feel like I’m not.” She pauses. “You know the iconic 27 club? Well, if we make it through 27, we’ll be alright.”

Frankly, Ora seems unlikely to fall foul of rock ‘n’ roll’s definitive cautionary tale.

For a start, the hangovers have started to hit her (“I used to be able to go out, wake up and not really have a hangover — now it takes two days to get over one”), but more importantly she’s revving up for a new chapter. In March, she’ll release her first album since 2012’s Ora, the long hiatus largely down to a contractual falling out with her former record label Roc Nation.

Her latest single, Anywhere, the second from the as-yet-unnamed album, is number two in the charts — she estimates it is about “200 copies” off the top spot. Your Song, the first song from the new record, is a collaboration with ginger troubadour Ed Sheeran and was released over the summer, peaking at a promising number seven, and the album tour will start in May 2018. When we speak, she is in Moscow for a performance. Granted, though, the break from music hasn’t been a sabbatical. For the past five years she’s been presenting (turns for The Voice, America’s Next Top Model, The X Factor), acting (notably, playing Christian Grey’s sister Mia in Fifty Shades of Grey) and collaborating with brands including Adidas and Tezenis.

“I’ve grown into this 360-degree artist, which I am very proud to call myself. It’s modern.” But she also found the break from music “frustrating” and she’s excited to be back.

Plus, there are further good omens for the year ahead. For a start, her 27th was Ora’s “best birthday ever”. She spent it in Kenya, lodging with Masai tribes, and witnessing the work of the Kenya-based conservation charity Space For Giants, for which she is now an ambassador. Space for Giants secures elephant habitats, protects herds, campaigns to end the ivory trade and educates communities about living side-by-side with elephants.

The whirlwind trip to Kenya was “incredible”. “I saw the wild animals and how they lived — it was a different perspective,” she says.

“Based on that, I really started to care about how they lived. All my childhood memories of wild animals are from zoos, where they were in our habitat. My eyes opened up in such an amazing way.”

She “didn’t think twice” about getting involved. “I thought it would be an amazing opportunity to shine a light on something so important. People