I don't know about you, but interviewing a Welsh teenager who sings precisely the kind of crossover classical MOR I can't bear to listen to, would never make it to the top of my list of "10 excellent ways to spend a Saturday morning". Not even if . . . No, let's be absolutely honest here. Especially not if that teenager happens to be the six-million dollar angel herself, purveyor of Pie Jesu to the Pope, the President of the United States of America and record-buyers right across the planet, Cardiff chorister turned soprano superstar, Charlotte Church.
To be fair, young Charlotte probably wasn't fussed - as she'd most likely put it, in her Welsh-lite accent - on meeting me, either. But she sat where she was told to sit and answered questions she has doubtless answered hundreds, if not thousands, of times before. She hardly fidgeted at all. She rarely showed signs of impatience. Occasionally - and oddly appropriately - her voice betrayed her, slipping almost imperceptibly towards autopilot. For the most part, though, she appeared warm and sincere and totally, absolutely charming. And this girl is, let's remind ourselves, 14 years old. It would be impossible not to be impressed.
To start with, she arrives armed with something to talk about, neatly avoiding that awful, "Um, right, let's begin" moment which bedevils all celebrity interviews. Plonked on the table in front of her is an enormous historical novel set in Cleopatra's Egypt. "Oh, it's a fantastic book - this is the second time I've read it," she declares. "I really wanna go to Egypt now." Would Cleopatra be a role model for her, then? "Definitely. Definitely." Much enthusiastic shaking of head. Because she was pretty tough, wasn't she? "She was, she was." Which I'm sure you have to be? A cautious chuckle. "Kind of, yeah . . . "
So far, so normal teenager. But normal teenagers don't go around making millions of pounds a year, travelling business class on planes and being told how special they are every time they open their mouths. Normal teenagers don't work to schedules so rigorous that they have "CC to sleep for 10 hours" written into them. How on Earth does she keep tabs on "normal life" as opposed to, well, all this sort of stuff? "It's all mixed up together, really. I've just been to school yesterday. No, not yesterday. What day was it - Thursday. We've just come back from a big tour but generally it's one or two weeks away, a couple of days at home, one or two weeks away, a couple of days at home. But then in the summer, I have two months off to do my exams."
Which is, when you stop to think about it, not normal at all. The astonishing thing is that a kid who travels with a private tutor (and now, a make-up artist as well) can still yammer on about school subjects like every kid you've ever heard. "I quite like English. I love analysing poems and stuff like that. Hate maths. I like history - I'm not interested in, like, Elizabeth I and kings and things, but I really like BC and early AD."
We're back to ancient Egypt again. But for somebody who doesn't care much for kings, Charlotte Church has got to meet quite a few of them. She sang for the Clintons at the White House, and has met everybody who's anybody among British royals.
So what's the most exciting thing that has happened to her? "I think meeting the Pope," she says, "because my whole family is Catholic so it was, like, a huge honour for us." I must look sceptical, because she rushes on: "But everything that happened this year has been really exciting . . ." And is there anything she doesn't like about being famous? She pulls a face.
"Not being able to be yourself around everybody. You can't let anybody see you jetlagged or in a bad mood. I mean, you go in to interviews and you have to be really happy and energetic all the time, no matter how tired you are. And you have to be always aware of the people around you; because if I'm in a bad mood and I start having a strop with my mum or something and there's like, say, a few cameras around, I have to be really, really careful. We have to keep our mouths shut until we get into the hotel room."
This last has a strangely truthful ring. You can just imagine Charlotte Church being warned to keep her mouth shut because, let's face it, keeping her mouth shut has never been her strong point. She's been singing since the age of three. When she was 11, she went on Jonathan Ross's TV talent show, ostensibly to introduce her cabaret singer aunt, and brought the house down with four lines of Pie Jesu. When she was introduced to the UK president of Sony, he chatted politely for a few minutes and was about to dismiss her when she said, "Don't you want to hear me sing?" She probably hadn't got much further than the fourth line that time, either, before he had his chequebook out and a contract ready.
She has a lot to thank Pie Jesu for, but she admits that it "got a bit tiresome after a while". There's nothing she actually hates singing, but there are some numbers which make her heart sink a bit. Hardly surpassing, when you consider that her preferred listening is not Ave Maria and O Mio Babbino Caro and The Last Rose Of Summer but Travis, The Stereophonics and the Manic Street Preachers. "I'm not fussed on pop - like, cheesey pop. I quite like Britney Spears because she's kind of, like, classy pop. I like Westlife; they're classy pop." Who, then, would she class as "cheesey pop"? "Ah. Aqua? I'd better not mention any Sony artists, otherwise I'll get into trouble. But my favourite artist at the moment is a guy called Marc Anthony. Oh, and I love the Corrs. I love the Corrs. But Marc Anthony - he's, like, a Latin singer, a salsa singer? He's really good."
Right. No doubt Cleopatra would have approved. But she's ahead of me again. "I like singing classical music, coz it's different. But I'm not sure exactly how I'm gonna feel when I'm, like, 17. As stupid as it sounds, I have no idea what I wanna do. I don't know if I want to be a classical singer or go into musicals or do a crossover thing. Or be an actress. Or be an archaeologist and try and find Cleopatra's tomb!" She agrees, though, that it's nice to have choices. "Yes it is. It is. I've got a lot of doors open to me at the moment. But of course they might all be shut by the time I'm 17." They might. But this writer, for one, wouldn't bet on it.
Charlotte Church will perform a programme of modern classics with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at Punchestown Racecourse, Co Kildare, on Saturday, June 17th. Tickets cost £40 and £60. Booking at HMV shops, online at www.ticketmaster.ie or on the 24-hour credit card line 01-4569569.