Cyndi Lauper likes to talk. She can talk for America. And England. And Italy. It’s the end of a long international press day and I’m told that Cyndi is running about 15 minutes late. Then 30. Then 45. Then a whole hour. But this isn’t sulky divaish behaviour The woman who sold 16 million copies of her debut album She’s So Unusual in 1984 is back on a high. She has topped the American Billboard dance chart with Same Ol F***ing Story (there’s no swearing in the title of the UK version, but plenty in the song and sprinkled in her conversation).

She welcomes me into her room at the Mayfair Hotel, dressed in a black dress and grey military jacket, blonde hair slicked back. Her make-up looks subtle but later she confesses: “Someone painted my face for an hour to make me look this good.” She appears nothing like her 55 years. “I’m so sorry to keep you waiting,” she says earnestly. “But when I get into an interesting conversation with someone, I just can’t seem to finish on time, y’know? It drives my manager crazy.” Lauper rolls her eyes and orders us some drinks.

The last time I saw her she nearly knocked my drink over. It was five years ago at the Café de Paris. She was show-casing her album of covers At Last, and was clambering on my table as she sang Unchained Melody.

“Were you scared?” she asks, still looking and sounding as cute as Betty Boop. “ ’Cos a lot of people were scared.”

At the time, the huge success of Girls Just Wanna Have Fun and She Bop was a distant memory, and people were also scared of letting her make another record. “That album was a side project,” she says. “But then I wanted to do my own record, and the record company were like, ‘Oh, we want you to do another cover record.’ And I was like, ‘I don’t f***ing think so.’ Then I bumped into Jeff Beck and we had this idea to do a blues album together, but they said no. Then they wanted me to do an Eighties record and I was like, ‘Hey, these songs weren’t even as big as mine in the Eighties. What the hell am I doing covering them? I might as well cover myself.’ What can I tell you? They didn’t have faith in me as an artist. They were just a load of suits, and it was the suits who wrecked the f***ing music business.”

In many ways, Lauper is still the opposite of her big Eighties rival Madonna. Where Madonna often comes across as brittle and defensive in interviews, Lauper speaks freely. Where Madonna continues to market herself primarily as a sex object, Lauper has always been a singer first. But like Madonna, Lauper has gone back to the dancefloor, and she has done so aided by a series of European co-writers and co-producers, and by becoming a bit of an anglophile. Collaborators on the new album Bring Ya to the Brink include Basement Jaxx, Digital Dog, Dragonette and the Scum Frog.

So how did it come about? “I tried writing a few things but they weren’t working. So one day my manager said to me, ‘Go to England. Go to Europe. Just go away.’ Just like all the great writers and artists, right? So this became my European period. I already had the movie playing in my head. So I came to Kent. Then I went to Paris. I did my own laundry. I didn’t have a minder. I was free.

“But first I hung out with [the electro-house production duo] Digital Dog. And that’s when it occurred to me, driving to Kent, that here they not only drive on the other side of the road, but they sing on the other side of the beat. Americans always sing a little after the beat, but not the English. They’re right on it. So we started writing together and we came up with the idea of a dance record about someone living 9 to 5.

“I kept asking, what are we writing about and who is the person singing, and what’s her story? Because every time you get on a dancefloor, you’re dancing with somebody, but you’re also dancing with the singer. And who’s the singer? So as I’m writing I’m thinking, who is this girl? Well, she’s in her apartment, she’s getting ready to go out, she’s working class, and she’s English. So suddenly it’s my English period.”

She enjoyed working with Digital Dog. “They were the first guys I worked with on the album. At first I thought they were gay, but they’re not.”

Lauper, of course, is very popular with gays. “But I hate that expression,” she says. Like they are not quite real people.” Unlike some artists, who turn up at GAY or produce an album for the gay fans whenever the hits dry up, Lauper’s commitment to the cause is genuine. Her sister Elen is a lesbian, and for a few years in her teens Cyndi tried to convince herself that she was, too. “My sister was gay, my best friends were gay, so I figured I had to be gay. So I did everything they did. I tried kissing girls. But it didn’t feel right for me and eventually I was forced to come out as a heterosexual.”

In 2007 she launched an annual True Colours tour, which this year features artists including the B52s and Andy Bell, and helps to raise awareness of homophobia. “This community for me is my beloved community,” she says. “This is not a money-making venture. I have been running with this community all my life, and when I hear people like George Bush talk about the gay community being antiAmerican it makes my blood boil.

“The guy who saved the White House, one of the heroes who crashed that plane on 9/11, was gay – the rugby player Mark Bingham, who died on United 93. And does Bush ever mention that? Does he f***! That gay guy saved his lousy ass. And this guy who says he prays to God, this guy who promotes hate and fear, this guy we call our President . . . This guy is the true antiAmerican.”

Bring Ya to the Brink is out now. The True Colours tour opens at Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, Oct 10 (www.cyndilauperuk.com)

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