Best of British: breakfast with Lily Allen

Matthew d’Ancona talks to the quintessentially English pop star about growing up, her longing to have children, celebrity culture, US politics and her new album

I am sitting opposite a demure young Englishwoman, sipping on jasmine tea, who would like nothing more, she says, than to settle down and have children. Young people and their parties interest her less and less. She likes the company of older friends now, and more sophisticated conversation. She shows me her elegant new Smythson notepaper, and discusses US politics, academic life and her plan to take her mother to Jamaica for Christmas. In person, she looks more like a Jane Austen heroine than a party queen. Meet Lily Allen.

It is hard to reconcile the woman in the flesh with her tabloid image as the definitive post-adolescent hedonist, the pop star who supposedly ‘falls out of nightclubs’ (as the red-top newspapers like to put it) and feeds the paparazzi with images of crazy nightlife.