I'll wait for gay wedding

I had seen his documentary the night before. For a man who has always been private, rarely giving interviews, it is frank, and not always flattering. His friends describe him as "brave", "stupid", "naive", "cautious" and "infuriating". He strokes his stubble. "I'm all those things. I didn't want the film to be a whitewash ... I knew Boy George would slag me off. The first thing he ever said to me was, 'You're so straight you must be gay.' He hadn't seen me in the white satin shorts at that point ..."

I tell George he seems at ease with himself. "That's true, I am comfortable, now that I'm in my forties. I can look at myself in the mirror." He says he spent such a huge chunk of his life being "frightened" and "not good enough". I say it seems that from when he signed a record contract, aged 18, through the releases of Faith and Listen Without Prejudice, Older and Patience (during which time he amassed a fortune of £80 million), he hasn't enjoyed much of it. "I realised early on that being on the road to pop stardom was not going to bring me happiness, but I couldn't get off."

Michael hated touring, promoting and appearing in his videos. This led to the 1992 court case when he tried, unsuccessfully, to divorce Sony. "It was the phobia about cameras," he says simply. "That's why people don't realise I'm always in London because they so rarely see me. People think I'm a lot more snotty than I am, they can't appreciate what it is to have a phobia."

Does he think he's ugly? "I hated looking at pictures of myself because they reminded me of myself as a child. One of the things I see in my face is vulnerability, because I was a very vulnerable child, and I see less of that as I get older. I'm sure at some point I will freak out and do bits and pieces, but I don't think it's time yet."

He reminds me that his father, Jack, once told him he couldn't sing. Do they get on now? "Very well, he has been great with me for a long time. He thought I would end up broke, he didn't understand music ..." He does, though, blame his father for the hard life his mother, Lesley, had to lead. She always had two jobs, and would work in her husband's restaurant every night. "She was a superwoman in terms of how well behaved we were and how immaculate the house was. She did it all well, but she lived on a knife edge and therefore so did we."

When Michael became successful, he took the pressure off her financially and "she just blossomed. I didn't have a bad word with her in the last 17 years of her life. That is the most amazing achievement of my life. She was beside herself with pride." It's a shame he didn't have more time with her; she died of skin cancer in 1997. "There was so much I wanted to do in return, I still do feel very robbed of that. I would definitely have had a granny flat for her ... She was so perfectly well behaved, so respectful of distance, that I could have had her living with me to her dying day."

I tell him a friend of his had said he'd popped round to see him one evening and there he was in a dressing gown with a stubbly beard, watching Sky TV and eating junk food. He is at last learning to let go. "I would once have been furious if a friend had brought a stranger to my house and I looked like that, whereas now I don't give a toss."

I ask if part of his unhappiness throughout his career was due to the fact he was living a lie. But he thinks the fear of coming out saved his life. "When I was 19 I told Andrew and Shirlie [his backing singer]. They were my closest friends, and, yeah, they dismissed it. But I'm not blaming them. I was spared all kinds of things by my own denial, not just the press. People tend to go a bit crazy sexually when they come out, and had I come out then, when people weren't aware of Aids, I would have been exposed, not just to my own risk, but to all that death and destruction. I was sheltered, and I feel guilty about that ... The heavens evened things up because when I did finally fall in love, it was with someone who was HIV positive."

He says that even though he was often lonely, he was able to achieve so much. "All my energy went into my career. I wasn't having the sex life I should have been having, I didn't think about drugs, I never smoked. I didn't do anything."

After Anselmo died, he couldn't write for a long time. When he did, he returned with Older. "That was the most inspired album of my career because of the feelings around bereavement. I know that record helped so many people, and you can't get much more important than that." He still writes songs, and will make another album, no matter how many times the papers write that he is retiring. "They like to make it look as though I am ungrateful, doing a strop."

I ask if he regrets not having children. "I am still capable," he says, putting on a fake camp voice. "When you come out they don't give you an automatic vasectomy. But no, I don't regret it at all. I have such a ludicrously free life, so much personal freedom. I think if I were to try to be a parent, I would do the job properly and be responsible - I would never tell my child they couldn't sing - but I would be miserable. My songs are my children ..."

And your labradors? "The funny thing is, I'm totally aware of what that love is. You need somewhere to project those emotions if you don't have children. They are such great value for money. The older dog's tail actually starts to wag when my soup gets down to a certain level, and I will always give her the bowl. They are dogs to me but to Kenny they are like surrogate children."

He seems content at last. "I always thought I was cursed. CBS changed hands and became Sony, I meet somebody, fall in love, find out he is terminally ill, lose the court case, lose my mother, get myself arrested - that was the only part I don't look back on as a tragedy. But I think my luck has evened out. It has taken a good four years of nothing disastrous happening to not be afraid of the future," he says, kissing me on both cheeks, which I tell him is a huge thrill for someone who was actually there, in 1982, when Wham! made their first live appearance at the Lyceum on the Strand.

"I remember that night I wasn't singing, I was just shouting. There was so much adrenaline, not much finesse ... I would never have believed while writing Club Tropicana in a basement flat in Peckham with Andrew that it would be on the radio for 20 years."

I tell him I was quite glad when I found out he was gay, because it meant no other woman would have him. "I think that's how my mum felt," he says, his eyes for the first time shining with tears.