FACE TO FACE WITH MADONNA

Writer Louise G an non survives a one-on-one with the scary diva

As pop icon Madonna rockets towards 60 on August 16, I can’t help but remember that a decade ago I sat in the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills awaiting an audience with her.

It was weeks ahead of her 50th birthday and the beginning of her concert tour to promote her album HardCandy.

Eight writers had been hand-selected from all over the world. There was tension in the room – there always is with Madonna – because there was one rule she was insisting every journalist follow: Under no circumstances can you ask her about turning 50.

I was the last person to speak to her that day. The journalist before me, a nervous Italian, was led out of her interview room after less than 15 minutes, close to tears. He’d not asked the forbidden question – he’d done something far worse. He’d bored her with tedious queries and then sat in terrified silence, flipping back and forth through his notebook as she demanded, “Ask me something interesting.” He was struck dumb, so she had him removed.

She was wearing a black leather jacket, black trousers and a scowl when I walked in. I was prepared. She complimented me on my outfit – I was wearing gold sandals from her H&M collection because I’d interviewed her six times before and know she takes in every tiny detail – and I grinned.

“We’ve been told not to ask you about turning 50,” I said. “But you’re a feminist, you’re a trailblazer and women want to know how you are going to handle 50.”

“You’ve broken the rule,” she said firmly.

“Yes,” I answered, making sure I gave direct eye contact. “Because that’s what you’ve taught women to do. I’m only following your lead.”

She burst out laughing and I had a longer audience than anyone else that day, possibly because of the early exit of the terrified Italian.

Ten years ago, she gave me her manifesto for ageing: “I’m not going to be defined by my age. Why should any woman? I’m not going to slow down, get off this ride, stay home and get fat. No way ... I will certainly never get fat.”

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The first time I met her was in 1989, when she’d just had a $5 million contract with Pepsi revoked after the Vatican condemned her for the “Like a Prayer” video, which featured burning crosses, stigmata and her making love to a saint in a dream sequence.

She was (slightly) less intimidating then, but Madonna doesn’t necessarily give interviews – she gives tests. She said I had to tell her a joke. “What’s the difference between a rock star and a dictator?” She shook her head. “You can negotiate with a dictator.” She laughed.

How did Madonna feel

being banned by the Pope and losing $5 million?

“I got to number one all over the world, didn’t I? And I’m not here just to entertain people. I’m here to make them think. I want to push boundaries. Or else what’s the point?”

When Madonna first exploded on the scene in 1980, a dancer in New York’s arty club world, she seemed – as she once told me – like another “piece of ass to be exploited for a fast buck”.

“Being underestimated is a very powerful position to be in,” she said. “No-one expected a woman to make a deal, break a deal and make demands.

“People call you a bitch and a ball-breaker. No-one calls a powerful man that. No-one asks, ‘Can he cook and look after his children?’ If it takes being a bitch, I’ll be a bitch.”

She can be surprisingly funny – Madonna can even laugh at herself. Ex-husband Guy denied Ritchie by used Madonna to mock–that her he’ d outrageous bee name re out fits. sperm donor. When married, she said,

“Sometimes, down me you a going look the stairs. as and tonight, I’ve says, He come gives ‘Who then?’ are Isn’t that a great put-down?”

I’ve asked Madonna many times what it is that drives her. “I am entirely a product of my childhood – I have dealt with a lot of my demons, but the biggest one is still to do with my mother dying when I was young.

“I felt the world around me was chaotic and I needed to have some control, which would enable me to pull myself up by my bootstraps. That’s when the self-discipline started. In life, I have to be engaged, to be learning, doing, living. I’ve never wanted to be disengaged or to miss a moment.”

I’m glad not to have missed a moment in her company because women like Madonna are rare. You cannot predict how she is going to react to any question or what words are going to come out of her mouth. Therein a tiny is no flat such in thing Soho. as By the complacency beginning of in 2000, her world she found – evenherselfat 60.pregnant with son