Prince and I have had a love thing going for years. So what if we only see each other when he plays London once or twice a decade? When it comes to relationships, especially with a true soul mate, isn’t quality of time more important than quantity? We most recently communed last autumn. What touched me most about the show was its intimacy. Even though staged in one of today’s branded megavenues, Prince’s performance was as intensely personal and seductive as if all 23,000 devotees were gathered in a tiny club. How many other talents could achieve that? Some artists speak to you so clearly, it’s as if they’re hardwired to your own soul. And so it is, for me, with Prince.

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What does the fashionable man about town wear for the coming global recession? Make mine a zoot suit. Blame it on bandleader Kid Creole if you like. When hard times last hit the UK, back in the early ’80s, his was the killer-diller style my pals and I most craved. In a banana-yellow zoot, shoulders padded wider than Oxford Street, and crooning “I’m A Wonderful Thing, Baby,” the tropical gangster evoked places and realities worlds apart from Britain’s dole queues and riot-torn cities. I loved the look’s sheer exuberance: how the broad-lapelled jacket and high-waisted, cuff-trimmed trousers turned the Kid into a living exclamation mark. How the luxurious folds and clamorous colours gave him space to be whoever he wanted. To me the zoot still says of its wearer, “I am here. But you cannot know me, let alone own me or make me redundant.”

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