“On the meet and greets before the show, they go Oh My God, my favourite people are you and Bette Midler. I love her but we are not really anything alike.

“I think they must love any woman who really wails like me, Christina or Cher.”

Then she drawls: “I have a lot of lesbian fans who hit on me. If I give someone a hug I’ll feel a hand linger on my butt. They’re usually having a joke about it. It’s because there’s all this thing about ‘am I gay or not’ because I don’t have a boyfriend.”

With a touch of steel in her voice, she adds softly: “My favourite thing is when someone tries to attack me with it.

“If I was, I would not want to tell you. I’m not, but a lot of people are wanting me to be.”

Performance-wise, Kelly has gone in the opposite direction of X-Factor/Idol shows. She dislikes excessive production and describes her show as “intimate” – 21 songs of “a little bit of everything”.

But she’s fiercely proud of her Idol pedigree. “Sometimes when I watch it now they say you have no ‘it’ factor. I know I won it and I had no ‘it factor’.” Millions would disagree.

KELLY CLARKSON plays the Liverpool Echo Arena on February 9.