Morrissey, the bequiffed singer of The Smiths, became the icon for a teenage generation when he first rose to fame in the Eighties.

Moody, opinionated and intensely self-aware, he epitomised the sense of isolation of the angsty adolescent.

Twenty years on he is in the throes of a hugely successful comeback - but instead of time mellowing him, he's as miserable as ever, and proud of it.

"I was diagnosed with depression before they knew what gender I was," he quips.

"I was only depressed because I had a poetic instinct about things and I didn't want to walk in a pack.

"More than anything else I wanted not to be ordinary. And I wanted to be considered to be a bit peculiar. When I was at school I looked around me and I thought: 'Well, however you are I don't want to be like you, so if you think I'm unbalanced then I'm delighted.'

"I think if you're remotely intelligent you can't help being depressed. It's a positive thing to be. It means that you're not a crashing bore. I mean, you don't get support groups for rugby players, do you?"

The Smiths were a band out of time, which is perhaps why they have aged so well. Their record sleeves celebrated icons from Alain Delon to Yootha Joyce, and many of Morrissey's themes were rooted in the past.

Going against the grain of the flashy, shoulder-padded Eighties, Morrissey promoted celibacy and Oscar Wilde, wrote witty, literary lyrics about child murder, his wretched schooldays at St Marys Secondary Modern and the world-view of a racist football thug, and as a solo artist he even managed to top the charts during 1988's acid house Summer of Love with an album called Viva Hate.

Being out of sync with the trends of the time was one of The Smiths' defining characteristics. They were declared the Greatest Artists Of All Time in the 50th anniversary issue of NME two years ago and the four studio albums, three compilations and 17 singles they knocked up between 1983 and their split in 1987 are regarded by many as the most consistent body of work in British pop.

Morrissey continued the good work when guitarist Johnny Marr left the band, effectively finishing it. Despite claiming he was devastated, he bounced back just six months later with the much-applauded Viva Hate, which bested The Smith's last album.

Today, the influence of The Smiths and Morrissey as a solo artist can be heard echoing in such bands as Franz Ferdinand, British Sea Power and The Libertines, all self-confessed fans whose prickly intellect and pop flamboyance has been traced back to Morrissey's world by many a critic.

Meanwhile, everyone from The Strokes to JK Rowling has come forward to praise Morrissey's genius. The Ordinary Boys are named after a song from Viva Hate and Dante from Hot Hot Heat has 'This Charming Man' tattooed on his wrist.

With such longevity and the die-hard support of his fans it is perhaps not surprising that, after a seven year hiatus, Morrissey had one of the most successful resurgences ever. His hometown comeback show at Manchester's MEN Arena sold out within hours, and the show featured his name spelt out in red neon across the stage in a pastiche of Elvis Presley's 1968 comeback TV special.

His seventh solo album, You Are The Quarry, was a quick hit, and the singles Irish Blood, English Heart and First Of The Gang To Die dominated the airwaves. Hundreds of new fans were won over.

Absence only seems to have made hearts grow fonder, and Morrissey is now firmly back in the mainstream eye.

"How very nice and right it feels to be in the British Top Ten again alongside such major talents as Eamon and Frankie," he sighs. "I've found a very nice label Sanctuary and I've made an album that I really love, and it changes my life and pushes me forward."

Yet it wasn't always a breeze. On the single Irish Blood, English Heart, he sings of "standing by the flag not feeling shameful, racist or partial". This refers to his notorious performance at Madness's Madstock weekender in 1992, when he faced an audience full of BNP-supporting skinheads - unhappily a section of Madness' fanbase since their early 2Tone days.

The backdrop bore huge pictures of skinheads and, as he sang one of his most-racially contentious songs, The National Front Disco, he wrapped himself up in a Union Jack flag.

The NME, a publication which had hitherto been such dedicated fans that non-believers would spit "Why don't you just call yourself New Morrissey Express," branded him a racist. Rather than denying the charge and explaining his side, Morrissey refused to respond.

"I knew the people I was dealing with and there was no point," he says. "It's more dignified to step away than to run towards them and say: 'Please forgive me for something I haven't done'.

"I think it was a couple of journalists who couldn't stand the sight of me and wanted to topple me. You can't really trust them to meet and talk and explain, because then they'll say: 'We met him and he really is racist'. They're not going to say anything nice about you when they hate you that much."

Twelve years later the silence was broken when NME did a two-part special on the hero-come-villain.

"I realised that the people who are at NME are a different breed now. It's not the crusty geriatrics who were there in the early to mid-Nineties. And also with You Are The Quarry I feel that I have something to badger people about."

In 1997, Morrissey's frustrations took on a new dimension. He and Marr lost a court case against their former Smiths colleagues Mike Joyce and Andy Rourke, who sued them for 25 per cent of The Smiths' performing royalties (rather than the songwriting ones) - not the ten per cent they were paid at the time.

At the end of the proceedings Judge John Weeks famously branded Morrissey 'devious, truculent and unreliable'.

"It's destroyed. It really is destroyed," says Morrissey of his relationship with his former bandmates. "Joyce and Rourke and Marr could have stepped in and said something in my defence.

"But they didn't. They let the judge say the most hateful things about me, which they knew weren't true.

"I have said that the only way we'd ever get back together in the same studio is if we were all shot and somebody dragged the bodies in. The past is dead. It really is."

So, no reunion on the cards then.

1997 was also the year Morrissey released his album Malajusted, which was disastrously received and commercially unsuccessful. He relocated to Los Angeles shortly after and toured frequently, but got through a string of managers and aborted record deals without releasing anything.

"I ended up in LA by complete accident," he insists. "Life's full of snakes and ladders.

"I decided that I would revolve through the 40th door somewhere other than England. And I did. I just didn't want to turn 40 sitting in the same old armchair by the same old window.

"I'm not part of any Hollywood set. Quite the opposite. In a way I lead a very British life. It's still very much inanimate objects and a television screen and jolly old books and things like that."

It seems Morrissey's move to the States was a way of removing himself from people and indulging his loner tendencies, re-inforced by his alleged celibacy (he has been described as gay, but he refuses to specify and often denies any kind of sex life at all).

Put together with his insistent misery, uncompromising determination to go against the grain and tendency towards provocative, challenging statements like "reggae is vile" (contradicted later with "I said reggae is wild") - the picture is an eccentric, iconic legend who will retain his die-hard fans through the ravages of time.

"I'm not that hot on the human race to be honest. Very few people have anything to offer," he says.

Offer you?

"Offer offer. Offer the world. Offer themselves.

"You can constantly develop when you're by yourself. You don't when you're with someone else. You put your own feelings on hold and you end up doing things like driving to supermarkets and waiting outside shops - ludicrous things like that. It really doesn't do.

"We feel that there's a shame to being uncompromising and there's a terrible sadness to solitude, but none of the great poets ever thought that."

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