Jay talking

Jay found support in the form of an old friend, Ollie, a location manager who was at a loose end at the time. 'I said to him, "Drop what you're doing, I'll double your wages, you come and move in, no going to London, no going to clubs and we'll get fit."' Together they went through Jay's phone book, ripping out the pages listing anyone involved with drugs.

This is Jamiroquai's eighth album and no one from the original line-up remains in the band - apart from the man himself. He is in charge. 'Oh, yes,' he confirms. 'Jamiroquai is my stage name contractually and obviously I know the sort of direction I want to go in. I'm not going to relinquish control of this - it's here because it's got a boss. Obviously we have our ups and downs but generally I think we are a well-constructed, well-glued little unit. If someone new comes into the band, the guys will tell them that this is the way it goes.'

Jay's ambition and self-assurance are the products of a peripatetic childhood. Both his parents were adopted, he has no siblings save an identical twin brother who died at six weeks old, he was brought up on the road with his jazz-singer mother Karen Kay and he didn't meet his father until he was 28.

This meeting came about through his record company. 'I think that his wife and his workmates must have sussed it out and said, "That singer is called Kay and he's half Portuguese; he must be your son."' The meeting was successful and the two are now cautiously in touch although Jay claims to know little about what his father does. 'I'm not entirely sure - I never ask too many questions.'

By contrast, his relationship with his mother is fiery. Jay is very close to her while admitting that 'we're quite alike, almost too alike so a couple of weeks' company does us'. It has been written that Jay's father left Karen when Jay was a baby but he tells it differently. 'My dad was around, it's just

that she upped and left. I really don't know much but I suspect it had something to do with him being Catholic and my mum saying, "I'm not having any of that Portuguese Catholic stuff rammed down my kid's throat." My mum's a fairly feisty woman and not to be argued with. If you argue with her, you end up with what happened to him which was up, gone, bye. Where are you? "Not telling; see ya!"' His childhood was spent in and out of boarding schools, trailing around after a gigging mother. His earliest memory is of being caned on his first day at boarding school, aged four. He was hauled up for 'talking across the table' and administered three stripes by the headmaster of the Devon prep school whose name he claims to have forgotten. 'At four years old,' he says, 'that's pretty f***ing horrific. It doesn't really set you up too well for life.'

More happily and equally dysfunctionally he remembers being baby-sat by showgirls in their dressing rooms while his mother did her 5am set in Las Vegas. 'Probably why I've got a thing about heels and stockings now,' he says. 'It warped my tiny mind.' He feels no resentment towards his mother, only pride. 'She had to work,' he says flatly, 'and I saw her deal with crooks which set me up well.'

He has been a fierce and confident negotiator throughout his career, happily able to say to managers and record companies alike, 'There is no way a little muppet like you is going to take me out. Don't cause trouble with me and my career - that's the worst thing you could possibly do because I'm a very single-minded fella and I'm very determined and I'll make your life grief if you get in my way.' Externally at least, his upbringing instilled a mouthy confidence which goes some way to camouflaging his isolation.

He has a potentially arrogant attitude, not to mention the 20 million albums he's sold over the past 13 years, so it's odd that he should come across as touching. But his eyes are still trusting and, despite being a clever boy, he isn't cynical. The party mansion has become a family home, but with no family to put in it. What he is really doing is trying to put down some roots and feathering his nest for a Lady of the Manor. 'I don't want to hang about too long,' he says. 'It's just finding the lady. It's the two sides to me - what I do and how I live. One side has a duty, in a sense, to be out there rock'n'rolling it. The other one wants to be quite quiet and wander round and potter."

He's been single since his split from Denise Van Outen four years ago. They were a feted Nineties

couple, a Liam and Patsy lite, appearing on magazine covers and at premieres. But Denise's love affair with the red tops and her 'Jay and Me Forever' interview technique eventually took its toll. His cocaine habit and ensuing rages won't have helped. And I think the search for Mrs Kay is partly responsible for his newly clean, outdoorsy lifestyle. 'I tell you what - I've met enough girls in some club and then you end up doing cocaine together which is great for a couple of weeks, fantastic, wonderful. It's just a voracious sexual thing and then the bad mood starts and it becomes an empty thing.'

The future Mrs K is going to have to be the rosycheeked kind of girl who would prefer a walk by a lake to a line of cocaine. 'Love is love is love,' he says, sighing, 'but some people wouldn't dig this kind of lifestyle, they'd want to be in London all party, party. And some people want to go out with you because of who you are.' The fame, which was catnip to the girls a few years ago, is now exactly what he doesn't want them to be attracted to. 'You can't tell; you just have to play it by ear and hope for the best,' he says. 'Some people just want to shag you because they want to shag you and that's fine by me. I don't have a girlfriend and I'm not married so I'm quite within my rights. But if I'm with someone, I want to be with them seriously.'

Nonetheless, age and a general mellowing have not withered his remarkable ambition. 'It's almost like, every time you finish an album you've lost your job. So you have to get your job back.' Although success came early, he fought hard for it. After leaving school at 16 with five O levels, he scrabbled around for money to feed his music. 'I did all sorts of crap from market research to pizza delivery,' he recalls. 'Then there was the bad stuff - ferrying drugs around by the kilo. That wasn't fun I can tell you, dealing with all sorts of unsavoury characters, but I needed to do that to get the money to pay for the equipment to start the music. Eventually I just sold the gear in tiny little pieces, made the money I needed and did a runner.' He'd sensed that the police were on to him. 'I was being followed everywhere,' he says, 'and I knew I was heading for a five-year stretch and I couldn't have that.'

Soon afterwards Jay signed an unprecedented eight-album deal with Sony and his acid jazzy dance grooves became some of the most popular tunes of the Nineties. It was music that you could dance to or relax to, and he, in his endless hats (that he's now becoming weary of), was cool enough to be a viable pop icon. Seeing him now, padding around his kitchen, followed by his Alsatians Luger and Titan, that persona seems worlds away. All I see is a very clever, slightly melancholy man.

But then it's time for photos. Jay swaggers out into the sunshine wearing a cream Gucci safari jacket and mirrored shades, with a cigarette in one hand and a pretty make-up girl in the other. He knows he looks good. Where ten minutes ago he was all politics and music and furrowed brow, he's now twinkle and flirt and watch-yourselves-ladies.

He straddles his Harley which stands next to a £350,000 Maserati - he volunteers the price proudly, also pointing out Coco Chanel's 1968 Mercedes parked in the yard. I show him an early Polaroid of himself. He glances at the image. 'F***,' he says, 'even I'd shag me.' And then, as he lounges against the bonnet, his hand snakes up to cover part of the windscreen. 'Tax disc is out of date,' he grins guiltily. 'Once a criminal, always a criminal...' It's reassuring to learn that he's still naughty, even though these days he'd rather pluck a pheasant than punch a photographer.

The album Dynamite is out now. Jamiroquai plays Clapham Common on 3 July (tickets: 0870 060 1799)