The Sunday Telegraph (May 13th 2007)

Every Now And Gwen

She's sold more than 30 million CDs, runs a clothing label, has a hot rockstar husband and was part of the recent celeb baby boom. Is there anything Gwen Stefani can't do?

The neo-classical interior of the London private club, Home House, with its gold-piped organ, gold candelabra and gilt-edged friezes, seems an appropriate place to interview pop's golden girl. Not least because Gwen Stefani - who lives with her rocker husband, Bush frontman Gavin Rossdale, in the trendy north London enclave of Primrose Hill - says it was her love for all things British that brought her here from Los Angeles.

"I grew up loving British ska bands from the '80s. Then there's the accent - that gets me every time," she smiles. Evidently the accent worked, as she's been with Brit Rossdale for the best part of a decade. Right now, though, Rossdale is nowhere to be seen, and Stefani is sitting on a sofa with her entourage. There's a PA, her manager, her trainer, a standard issue super size security guy and a nanny, who's nursing baby Kingston James McGregor Rossdale. "He's just like his daddy," coos Stefani, of her 11-month-old son, who's sporting a mini-mohawk and a style as cool as his designer mum's.

While the 37-year-old is back on the rigorous promo trail [she's due to bring her Sweet Escape tour to Australia in July], young Kingston accompanies her everywhere. "I'm not giving him away to a nanny full-time," she says. "He's been with me every day and every night since he was born."

Before Kingston's birth, there was heated speculation as to when Stefani and Rossdale were going to add to their family, which consisted solely of Rossdale's much-loved pooch, Winston. "I have to say, people are more interested in me having a baby, than any record or anything I've ever done in my whole entire life," she said at the time.

But for Stefani, the much-anticipated pregnancy wasn't a time she relished, particularly in its early stages, when she was on tour without her husband.

"I was surprised how much I didn't enjoy pregnancy. Having something growing in your stomach feels so unnatural. Your body's changing and you can't control it. You just feel gross. I was having to get up on stage wearing bathing suits, looking fat. Nobody knew I was pregnant, except me. They were constantly having to add extra panels into my costumes. To be honest, I was feeling pretty bad about myself."

And she wasn't alone: 2006 was a boom year for celebrity offspring. Along with Kingston, Suri Cruise made her entrance, as did Violet Affleck, Moses Martin and uber-celebrity baby Shiloh Jolie-Pitt.

"I was in the celebrity baby boom!" says Stefani. "That was weird. It's not like we called each other and said, 'OK, we're going to have sex now and have a baby.' It was almost embarrassing. 'Oh my God, that person is having a baby now, too?'"

With Stefani's attention focused on her son, both Nelly Furtado and Fergie took the chance to sashay into her edgy urban-pop spotlight, releasing albums that were obvious descendants of Stefani's hit Love. Angel. Music. Baby. Did she feel threatened?

"Not really, because I was so consumed with being pregnant. Besides, it's an amazing compliment to see yourself in someone else. It's also really inspiring. It forces you to move forward in different ways." In other words, it only made her determined to reset the agenda with another album.

After Kingston was born, Stefani stayed home. "Then after three months, I was like, enough's enough, I want my life back. I'd gained 18kg, so I dieted and decided to go back to the studio."

While she felt lucky to be able to return to her music ("the good news about my life is that he can come with me everywhere"), it wasn't that easy. "I remember showing up for the first day feeling really chunky, hormonal and guilty," she said. "I thought, should I be here right now? I decided if it felt too hard, then it wasn't meant to be. But the whole experience turned out to be really great."

Indeed, Stefani's career has kept her jetting between homes in LA and London. In the US, she is neighbours with another famous globe-trotting mother, though this one is from the car-crash end of the celebrity spectrum - Britney Spears. "It's so sad. I feel like giving her a hug. I think she may move because of the grief. Every day there are 14 paparazzi cars waiting for her. I feel bad for her. It's tough."

Stefani knows what it's like to be in the maelstrom of madness that is modern-day stardom. But, unlike Spears, she remains completely in control of her life, her family and her moral compass. In the past few years, Stefani has become one of the most talked-about female performers in the world. After splitting from her band, No Doubt, she has become a multi-award winning solo star - her latest album, The Sweet Escape (released last December), has already sold 2.3 million copies. Her previous solo album, Love. Angel. Music. Baby., sold seven million, delivered two No 1 singles in Australia and one in the US and won her a 2005 Brit Award for Best International Female Solo Artist. And all this solo success comes on top of the 25 million albums she sold with No Doubt.

Every aspect of her life - from her looks, to her friends, to her marriage - is under the full glare of the media spotlight. But she handles everything with a cool, business-like attitude and has turned herself into a one-woman, multimillion-dollar corporation.

Unlike many other performers - who use their notoriety to sell records - the clean-living Stefani is far too aware of her image to damage her reputation with drink or drugs. She lived at home with her Irish-Italian Catholic parents until she was 30, and has only had two partners, Rossdale, and No Doubt's Tony Kanal (although there have been rumours of other short-lived encounters). No wonder Courtney Love once said, "She can't be a rocker, she's too clean."

In 2004, scandal hit in the form of her husband's ex-lover, Pearl Lowe, claiming that her 18-year-old daughter, Daisy, was Rossdale's love child [Rossdale was confirmed as the father of Daisy]. Stefani stayed quiet throughout and it remains the one subject off-limits today. It's easy to forgive this one element of control. On all other subjects, she is straight and open, and even offers a good line in self-deprecation.

She seems to have avoided the dark side of the music business that has cursed Robbie Williams and Britney Spears. "I'm very naive, but I keep myself to myself and do what I do," she says.

Stefani takes her work incredibly seriously. "I can spend a whole day agonising over what colour glass to put into my watches," she says, referring to L. A. M. B, her successful fashion line, "and weeks trying to work out one five-second section of a pop video. I totally admit I'm a freak."

Despite spending almost a decade touring, she is not a woman to be caught stumbling out of a club half-cut in the early hours of the morning. "Why would I want to do that?" she says. "I have to get up in the morning. I have to work. This is my job and I want to do it well."

Her approach has always been to do the job and avoid the parties. When she talks about her luxuries, it's the fact she no longer has to pack. "I'm not super-demanding, but I don't want to pack my clothes any more. Do you know how many times I've packed my clothes in my life? My assistant packs them for me now. I never want to hang up anything ever again."

But there is a twist to the fame and fortune - and it's the one thing that drives her on above everything else. Gwen Stefani is consumed with absolute self-doubt. She's the first to admit she was not a natural-born popstar. At school, her nickname was 'The Frog', and she only tried her hand at pop when her older brother, Eric, pushed her in front of a microphone to sing with a band he'd put together.

"I was a fat little nerdy kid who desperately wanted to be cool," she recalls. "People look at me and they think, it's so easy for her. She's a rockstar. She's cool. But inside my head, I'm still that little geek struggling to make people like me."

So imagine her surprise when Madonna called out of the blue to suggest she bring her husband over for dinner to meet Guy Ritchie. "I was stunned," she says. "Madonna was my idol. Her music was my inspiration. I always admired the way she handled herself, and then, there we were, having dinner. She talked about what it was like for us American girls being married to these British guys. Guy and Gavin got on really well, too."

Stefani is often credited with bringing good old-fashioned glamour back to the red carpet. So when the pop wannabes began to copy her style, she set up L. A. M. B. [Love. Angel. Music. Baby.], which is worn by Hollywood icons such as Lindsay Lohan, Teri Hatcher and Nicole Kidman, with jewellery and a fragrance to follow. Today she's wearing Stella McCartney skinny jeans and towering black Yves Saint Laurent shoes. Her convict-style top is modishly high street.

The only glitzy bits are the almost cartoonish items of 'G' branding she wears. There's a gold belt with a back-to-back double 'G' buckle, and on her right index finger is an oversize, black diamond-encrusted 'G' ring, on loan from a jeweller. "It's real and I'm hoping someone will buy it for me," she says. Hanging from a gold chain around her neck is the chunky double 'G' gold key made especially for the 'Wind It Up' video.

With all those Gs, it seems her insecurity has become part of her branding. "I do worry about how I look," she says. "It takes a lot of effort. Gavin jokes that my lips are permanently stained red, because the lipstick hardly ever comes off. But I have to make sure I have it on before I leave the house - who knows if someone will take my picture?"

Throughout her formative years, Stefani's style was quirky. "I'd spend all my spare time going to fabric shops with my mum, and getting her to help me make clothes. My prom dress was a copy of the one Grace Kelly wore in Rear Window, and one of the first dresses I sang in was a copy of a tweed dress Julie Andrews wore in The Sound Of Music. I guess I always had different tastes.

"I wasn't a girl guys fancied. I was about 4kg overweight and I wore odd clothes. Then, when I grew, a lot of the weight just shifted up with me, so I was popular enough at the end. But when you have grown up like that, you still think of yourself in a certain way. I'm still super-conscious about my weight - but I'd describe myself as a bit chunky. I'm never going to be one of those women who say, 'I look like I do because that's how I am.'

"I work out for a few hours every day to keep my shape, and I pay attention to everything about my face and clothes. If I start to slack off, it really shows - that little chubby kid starts coming out and I have to rein her back in again."