Therefore, I dance, I dance, and keep dancing, underage but overhere, on the dance-floor of Studio 54 where Bianca Jagger, on Brian Ferry's arm, approaches me to say " You are adorable, but boys who dance have no future ". See if I care bitch, I' ve Got All My Sisters With Me, and, travelling the world like a demon from stationtostation, I eventually land in France, where I discover that " young parisians are so french, they like Patti Smith " (Adam and the Ants). Punk passes by like a rainy weekend, Le Palace and Les Bains-Douches open and close quickly like Nô Theatre fans, but it’s in London, as usual, that interesting things happen. In the room next to mine, in Warren Street's squat, George O’Dowd is singing in a wonderful voice The River of no return to a Marilyn Monroe album he listens to on a battered old Teppaz, and I say to myself, Boy, this guy is really a superstar, even if he survives on one hamburger a week by stealing small change from bags at Blitz Club’s coat-check where he works. Everyday, he goes to Boots to steal a can of hair spray which he entirely puts on his elaborate hair-do before we go dancing with Marilyn, Sade, Kate and Jeremy of Hayzee Fantasy, fat Steve Strange from Visage (nicknamed Wally Weird or Knobby Normal), the two tacky straight Spandau Ballet brothers, my friends David and Stevie from Body Map, Stephen Jones the mad hatter and a very young but already very crazy John Galliano. One evening, George is so sad to have been dumped by his boyfriend Kirk Brandon (of the group Theatre of Hate) that he uses paint-spray to write in huge letters on the pavement in front of Kirk’s house: Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?. And the rest, as they say, is history. Always in London, I meet Bronski Beat (who have just released Smalltown Boy) at the Bell, and since rumour has it that I am a natural-born matchmaker, I introduce Jimi Somerville to Didier Lestrade, (who I met a while back at an Iggy Pop concert, wearing a transparent raincoat with a kilo of talcum powder on his hair, watch out sister, your roots showing are). Meanwhile, I discover that my boyfriend Adam is in almost all of the Smiths videos, and when I ask him why he has never told me about this, his answer is: " It’s because you never asked "... Hello?!?

Back to Paris, where the party’s over, we take our buddies every week to Le Père Lachaise, and I become for some years a music journalist, (but don’t tell this to anyone, my mother still believes I’m a prostitute in Dubai). I go round the world and back with the Spice Girls, and yes, I can certify that Victoria Beckham is not posh at all, but indeed "about as despicable as a footballer’s wife". I nibble at organic carrots in Atlanta with Janet (Miss Jackson if you' re nasty), I take the Concorde to listen to Dangerous by her brother Michael, with whom I dine in the desert near Palm Springs on the shooting of In The Closet (a typical topic, wouldn' t you say). Madonna shouts at me at the Ritz because I did not bring her the book I had promised her one year before (Save Me The Waltz by Zelda Fitzgerald), and, with "Neil and Chris from The Pet Shop Boys ", we stroll at dawn on Miami South Beach, returning from the latino clubs, humming Domino Dancing. In Los Angeles, I spot Michael Stipe and Morrissey intertwined at the bar of Leonardo di Caprio’s hotel after an REM concert, and I receive a Christmas card from Tori Amos ("Hope the holiday was bitching, we must have some chocolate in Paris"), which tempts me to sing "Hosana in the highest of heavens" rather than Crucify Myself. And by the way Losing My Religion stays at the top of the charts in Israel for almost one year, which confirms that a simple pop song can have an eternal impact on collective consciousness. (John Lennon’s Imagine being the ultimate example). 

And then things start to deteriorate seriously, because here I am, sat in hotel Costes in Paris, taking tea (for 13th and last time) with "the person who calls herself Mylène Farmer". I am always stunned by the poorness of her vocabulary, even if she likes to use words as "to converse" instead of just saying "let’s talk". Then I remind myself that my friend Bertrand Lepage, her inventor, who came out with wonderful sentences such as "If I have to fall from a height, let my fall be slow", is not here anymore to inspire her most beautiful lyrics, because he has shot himself in the mouth the day before the release of her album Innamoramento. So I leave her there, like the empty jar that she is, a jar with one handle in plaster, after casually saying to her: "I would have loved to tell you that I liked your last show Mylène, but unfortunately for you, I don’t know how to lie". At the other end of the Costes patio, there’s George Michael, surrounded like every true superstar, by a bunch of no no’s on the verge of a nervous break-down, and he turns to me, like Jesus to a child, and whispers "Excuse me for this fucking zoo". Which confirms what I’ve been thinking for a long time: the best popstars have a great sense of humour, from Elton to Madonna, from Morrissey to Lady Gaga. The others are the ones who, having had a semi-hit song, tell you very seriously that they see themselves as "the new Michael Jackson", while they are probably, as you’re reading this, sniffing for a manager spot at Earls Court’s KFC. Of course, some of these popstars are as cute as hell, so I sleep with a few of them, but you will have to wait for my memoirs to get some names, thank you very much. Let’s just say that you can listen to Ocean Blue by ABC, Wet Wet Wet's Broke Away, Shakira’s La Tortura (a trick one, that one) or Take That’s Back For Good and think about me in starfucker bliss.

So it it thus that, one evening with Robbie William, (who is really the funniest person on Earth, and no I did not sleep with him), while having a competition of "who remembers the largest number of fantastic lyrics by the Pet Shop Boys", that I write my first song, (Funny Forgettable) on the corner of a tablecloth. And as the Robster tells me " Fucking Hell, it’s really good that ", I write a dozen of other songs, some in english (Drop The Knowledge Dude, Do Something Sexy), and a dozen in french (Un qui aime les chiens et pas les chats, Une fête pour les gens qui s’embêtent, Tais-toi, j’adore)(Well there's no Editors note on this website but this writer being a good friend, I can say with all honesty that this last song is my fave, a real Vogueing stomper. Check it out, it's funny AND groovy). And then one evening, at the bar of Hotel Raphael in Paris, I am introduced to a boy as gorgeous as sunrise on the Persian Gulf. So I put the songs in a drawer, and forget about them to live The Secret Life of Arabia. It will take three more years to convince me to put one of those songs online, and when my darling boy hears Que Tal Maricon on his younger brother’s i-Pod, he asks me why I had never told him that I wrote songs, and I answer: "Because you never asked me". Ya Hayati! It's midnight in Abu-Dhabi, and my husband is falling asleep, blue-tooth in his ear, listening to my album. Yesterday, his young sisters went to see Linkin Park in concert with their friends, hair blowing in the wind in the Hummer. So I close my eyes to let sleep find me, and again I hear the bells of Tangier sing. And the music plays forever …