It’s been almost three years since Katy Perry, a minister’s daughter from California, kissed a girl and wrote a song about it and became the biggest pop sensation of the moment. Since then she married Russell Brand in India, and produced her latest album Teenage Dreams, which has topped the charts in more than a dozen countries. Now there’s a vast California Dreams worldwide tour to go with it. We meet in a posh hotel in London. She is wearing a silk jumpsuit - all languid even though we’re on the straight backed tartan chairs of the hotel’s restaurant. She orders a lunch of baked beans, tomato, cucumber and avocado.

RedHanded: Is that part of a health regime?
Katy Perry: No, it’s part of jet lag. I don’t know whether I’m eating breakfast or lunch.

Do you have an exercise and diet plan?
I like to skip rope and eat as healthy as I can. I like to have greens and cut out fast food. I have regular facials with Maki at Ole Henriksen spa. I’m addicted to her. If cats had jobs they would probably give facials because they are so good at kneading.

How is your cat Kitty Purry getting on with Russell’s cat Morrissey?
Oh, he can’t be bothered with her. You have to prance around with ballerina feet around him or he’ll scream. Morrissey is very English, old money English. He’s got his tux on because he’s black and white, the collar’s a little open, he’s had a few cocktails and he can’t be bothered with anybody. My cat Kitty Purry was the product of an ex-boyfriend who decided he didn’t want her and I took her under my wings. She’s like a dog in cats’ clothes because she cuddles and she comes when you call. We have got a new kitten called Krusty, as in Katy and Rusty and she’s a terror.

Russell, as a former addict, doesn’t drink at all. Has that influenced you?
Yes, in a healthy, positive direction. I never have any alcohol when I’m singing. That’s always been the case. I would never have been tempted. You can’t make me. Get behind me Satan. Russell is not boring just because he wants to sit on the couch. He’s a genius and geniuses are both wonderful and delicate in the greatest way. I loved Get Him To The Greek. Everyone did a great job.

Do you travel with security?
I don’t need security in some places. I do where people are crazy. I drive myself at home, I don’t need all that stuff.

You like people to connect and relate to you but do you also need to be able to distance yourself?
There’s a fine line. Of course, I want to be mysterious in some ways because the saying goes, ‘Mystery makes history’. I love to have that air about me but also one that is friendly. I really want to connect with people on a songwriting level. I’m not afraid of people.

You had a very strict Christian upbringing, yet paradoxically your parents are fully supportive of your sometimes naughty songs. Do you still love Jesus?
I think I’ve always been looking for answers. Wherever you come from as a child you swear you are not going to be like your parents, that you are going to be totally different and never look back. And when you look back it’s right behind you, breathing on you. I started off in gospel music when I started singing in church. I moved out of the house and everything, it didn’t matter what genre it was, I was like ‘give it to me’.

So you never fell out with your parents?
I transitioned. My parents and I have a lovely relationship.

And do your parents love Russell?
My mum has this idea about Russell that he’s going to be a great man of God and his transition is happening. I think it is happening in some way and it won’t be exactly specific to what my parents think it is. But can you imagine where he’s come from to where he is now? There’s got to be a reason why he’s arrived at all. My mum is saying there’s a purpose for your life. It’s not like you’ve walked through your life in a limbo type of way. You have goals, you achieve them. I’m all into the search. Sometimes you feel that you are in a water park for kids. They have the lagoon that goes round in circles and people are in their doughnut shaped floaties. Their fingers are pruning and they have a cocktail and they could sit for hours and it may not be the best thing. And that’s how I feel about my spiritual life. One day I’m going to really get out, go there, and ask the questions that I did when I was ten.

Why did you call your album Teenage Dreams?
Teenage dream is what a lot of adults still have because they are close to their teenage years. They remember the intensity of the emotion, of falling in love for the first time, and that song is about how he or she makes you feel like it is the first time. I want people to fall in love again intensely with this record in an emotional way. People get guarded as they get older because maybe they’ve been let down so they don’t allow themselves to feel as much as they did when they were sixteen. What I’m also saying is I love the idea that there is a teenage boy somewhere with my poster on the wall and they kiss me goodnight and they fall asleep hoping one day I’ll be in their dreams. It’s a very narcissistic thought but I love it. That’s why we make posters.

And that’s why you are a pop star. You love the attention and you’re not afraid to say it.
I think it’s fun. It’s a very classic image, a young kid embraces learning how to jack off. Am I a horrible person? Highly inappropriate, of course.

What can people expect from the new tour?
Well, what I have been talking about lately is that I would like to indulge people’s senses like sensory overload.  Not only with sound and sight, but maybe with your sense of smell, maybe with your taste buds - hopefully it will be a scrumptious, yummy tour. I have this idea that when people walk in to the room they get this whiff like cotton candy, just you know, extra little details. That’s what I love, just details in everything and I think you can see that with the packaging, the production, even at the small club gigs we are taking advantage of it to the utmost extent.

What you see is what you get?
I am not really trying to hide anything, I am always typically an open book about everything and what you see is what you get with that, but I think you get a lot more than what you see when you come to the show.

Katy plays the Cardiff Motorpoint Arena on October 19. Tickets from £31.50.
Call 029 2022 4488 for more information.

Katy plays the Cardiff Motorpoint Arena on October 19. Tickets from £31.50.
Call 029 2022 4488 for more information.

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