It's 3.15am and Mariah Carey is curled up on a sofa with a leather jacket wrapped around her legs to keep warm. She wants to talk about sex or, in her case, the lack of it.
“I call myself Mary Poppins,” she says, roaring with laughter at the notion she could be mistaken for the strait-laced nanny played by Julie Andrews in the classic children's film. Oozing sex appeal in an itsy-bitsy minidress made out of two basketball vests given to her by American sporting giant Michael Jordan, Mariah can clearly have any man she wants. Yet, she reveals to Sunday, she has been celibate for almost two years.
“I haven't had a relationship with anyone since Luis,” she says wistfully, referring to her split with Latin singing sensation Luis Miguel.
“But that's my choice. A lot of people I meet are only interested in me as a notch on their belt, a celebrity. They don't want to know me as a person.
“I have never had a one-night stand in my life or had a fling with someone that I didn't really know. Tomorrow I could meet someone and off we go but I doubt it.”
After her short-lived marriage to former Sony Records boss Tommy Mottola, who was twice her age, she had an affair with baseball star Derek Jeter. Then she met Mexican heart-throb Miguel and for three years they appeared to be blissfully happy.
I have been warned not to ask Mariah about her rather public breakdown in the summer of 2001, but it is something she brings up within minutes and she constantly refers to it as we chat.
Her stay at a Connecticut psychiatric clinic has clearly been the making of Mariah and she is happy to tell the world what happened.
“Luis and I had already split up but people didn't know about it, which is why they linked the fact that I got exhausted and went to hospital and called it a nervous breakdown over a guy,” she says.
“You know I find that very sexist and it is easy for people to say ‘Oh, the poor female at home crying tears over some guy,’ when in reality the relationship had already ended.
“It should have ended long before. I have nothing against Luis because it wasn't him breaking my heart. It was just me exhausting myself, like any other person having a bad day that spirals into seven days and affects your health.
“You have to eat and for a while I was eating junk food. And then I didn't want to eat because I was working such bad hours I was exhausted and I didn't have an appetite.
“Health-wise I wasn't taking care of myself, I was working ridiculously hard and eventually I was not just overly tired, I was too tired to sleep. I had so much going on and I had to deal with so many things and I had to have this star image. It just became too overwhelming.”
Late one night Mariah — by nature a nocturnal animal who goes to bed at dawn and sleeps all day — decided to take a break and typed a somewhat incoherent message on her website explaining this to her fans.
Headlines blared that she had attempted suicide.
“I would never attempt suicide. Spiritually it is something I don't believe in and I still get upset by the rumours because of the impact it could have on my young fans,” she says, sipping one of the soya milk drinks she now uses to boost her energy during long stints in the recording studio.
But perhaps the deepest wound was caused by bad-boy rapper Eminem. It was claimed they were dating and then, at the very moment she needed his friendship, it was said that she was hounding him with phone calls and was losing the plot.
“I've been friends with someone but not physically involved with him and seen him twist that and turn it into something,” she says.
I try to reassure her, saying even Eminem's friends and relatives believe he had a monster crush on her.
But she shakes her head and says: “I spoke to him on a regular basis but it was not a relationship. I find it pretty surprising that he would actually misrepresent something like that.
“In general terms I think that men who have to lie about having a sexual relationship, who misrepresent a friendship, must have an underlying reason for doing that. It's curious to me.”
Mariah, whose latest single “Boy (I Need You)” is about a crush and is released this month, exacted the supreme revenge on Eminem on her comeback album Charmbracelet with a track called “Clown.”
“A lot of girls identify with that song, we've all met clowns.” she laughs, explaining lyrics which include the lines “I should've never called you back when you pursued me” and “you should've never intimated we were lovers when you know very well we never even touched each other.”
Charmbracelet, which has sold three million copies worldwide since its release at the end of last year, is absolutely autobiographical.
“‘Boy’ is about a crush on someone and I have to keep saying this to myself, that I will make it through.
“It's not like now the world is lovely for me and everything is wonderful. But I do know I'lI make it through this.”
Therapy has clearly done wonders for Mariah, who celebrates her 32nd birthday next week. Nowadays she knows how to say no and makes a point of taking off on her private jet every few weeks for holidays.
Two years ago she bought her own downtown Manhattan apartment and finally she has a place to call home.
She still works like a fiend and on the night we meet she is a staggering seven hours late for our interview. Stories about her diva behaviour and massive entourage are legendary and as I wait I count up to 10 assistants on hand to cater for her every whim.
Finally, I am summoned to a deserted corner of Manhattan's Pier 59 Recording Studios and there in the darkness is Mariah, bouncing with energy but apologising non-stop about her lateness.
She gets emotional as she talks about her dad Alfred, who succumbed to cancer aged 72 eight months ago, and how she fulfilled his dying wish by making up with her long-estranged sister Alison over his hospital bed.
And she tells me how she worries about overworking her staff. “I have to remember their lives do not revolve around me,” she says.
Our meeting ends at around the time I normally get up in the morning but she suddenly does a Mary Poppins on me and insists on giving me a lift home.
There are three cars outside at her disposal. As we whizz through the empty streets I ask the driver why she needs them.
“She looks after everybody,” he says. “Mariah makes everyone feel special and she wants them to have a safe journey home.”
I find myself worrying about Mariah working too hard but realise that she has finally found time to look after herself.
As she puts it: “I learned the hard way. Sometimes you have to go through the toughest things to get to your best. I finally feel that I've done it and, having come out the other side, I can feel proud of that for the rest of my life.”
