richardbenson.com

In the autum of 2005, Madonna invited Alison Goldfrapp, former convent-school girl, two-million-record-selling singer and extremely reluctant celebrity, to a party. A few months earlier, Madonna had been photographed taking Supernature, Alison’s then-current album, to a Pilates class; at the party, she she clasped Alison’s hand in both of hers, and told her she just loved it. Not long afterwards, Alison noticed a picture in a magazine of Madonna in a sexy, short-skirted black outfit with a jaunty military wedge cap. It was almost identical to one that Alison - who is known for her original stage costumes - had been filmed and photographed while promoting Supernature.

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Mark Owen, the cutest member of Take That, and the one who suffered the nastiest depression after the band split up, has a bit of film footage that captures their experience of their 1990s fame perfectly. The five of them are in a tour bus driving down an obscure side street in an Italian city, and outside the roads and pavements are swarming with girls and policemen who are screaming, shouting and running around. Inside the bus behind the tinted windows, though, the noise is hardly audible, and the boys chat about what they’re going to do when they get to the hotel. That’s what it was like for four of their formative years, being in a bubble with strict itineraries and a view of the outside world as a muffled blur. None of them remember much detail about it now. When Gary Barlow was writing his autobiography My Take last year, he had to look up all the dates on internet fan-sites.

Ten years later, with five children but minimal weight gain and hair loss between them, the four remaining members of Take That are getting back in the bubble.

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Earlier this year Amy Winehouse’s life was in a mess. It had been marvellous. A couple of years earlier, aged just 20, she had released a critically-acclaimed debut album Frank, which had/HAS? now sold almost 250,000, and won her an Ivor Novello award for songwriting. Critics compared her voice to the great American jazz singers who had inspired her to sing in the first place. Living in London’s Camden Town with her boyfriend Blake, whom she loved so much that she had his name tattooed over her heart, she was the happiest she had ever been.

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You expect Beyonce Knowles to be politely tight-lipped in conversation – after all, modern record companies spend millions training their acts to avoid controversy, and Beyonce has rather a lot of controversy to avoid. As it turns out, though, she could talk for Texas. True, her glittery-white smile might slip and her nostrils perceptibly flare at questions about ex-members of Destiny's Child, or her father who is also Destiny's Child's manager; but mostly she is more minx than sphinx, giddy kipper rather than corporate cold fish. Her conversational style is a performance in itself. Just as Destiny's Child records have their inventive beats, expressive singing and insightful lyrics, so Beyonce's speech has the clapping and slapping of hand and thigh, much snorty laughter, and little epilogues of homespun pop-philosophy. She begins her answers in the measured tones of an etiquette-coach right enough, but generally ends up carried away by her own enthusiasm, babbling a native Houston accent as alluring and twangy as country gee-tars.

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