Nymphet of the 1980's, Vanessa Paradis makes a much-awaited comeback on the concert circuit. Her singing career has taken a back seat over the last few years, as she concentrated on screen appearances and the joys of motherhood. Until last autumn, when she brought out her most personal album to date, Bliss. What would you like the public to remember about your album? There are always songs that strike a chord with listeners, that make them think the songwriter has written about them. I'd like people to feel as if some of the themes were their own. How do you plan to recreate the same soft atmosphere on stage? I don't know yet. I'll have to be selective. It'll be extremely difficult to recreate everything that's on the record. Even if, unlike the songs on my other albums, I don't want to change the arrangements. We worked so hard on it that I'd really like to play them just as they are. The only difference is that there won't be any strings on stage. At any rate, there'll only be synthesised ones. I'm working on the list of songs we'll be doing and I haven't started on the arrangements yet. How are you going to select them? Are you going to do the ones that feel right? Yes, but the ones that feel good to me have to be in tune with the pace of the show. As far as I'm concerned, I'd rather have a ball singing ballads for an hour and a half. But everyone would fall asleep. Are you going to do your past hits? Most of the songs I'll do will be from my latest album, but naturally I'll do some tracks from my last three records. Will you borrow any numbers from other artists? I get quite a kick out of singing other people's songs. And the audience likes to hear familiar numbers… That'll be the surprise element. At nearly 28, you've already got a 14-year career behind you. What does that evoke? Not much apart from a lot of good memories. Fourteen years full of tremendous memories. Are you still enthusiastic about your profession? I've got the same appetite for it, but the form has changed. At 14, I had to build my career. I had my family and friends… Today I've made my own family and it's much more important than anything else. Even if doing concerts is still a "huge" challenge. Even bigger than before! Could you interrupt your career if your family needed you to? Yes, of course. When you're 70, career or no career, it's the people you live with, the people you love who matter. So they should start to matter immediately. Not late in life. If you had to pinpoint just one of your talents, which one would it be? I hope I don't sound pretentious when I say that I don't cheat. Having said that, I work on the assumption that people who are stupid don't necessarily realise it. So it's hard to judge one's good points. You might have mentioned your voice's special tone… I could never have said that. It's something I don't like very much about myself. I live with it, that's all. Even now? I'd rather have a voice like Billie Holiday's or Tom Waits'. Anyway, people are rarely satisfied with what they've got. They always prefer what their neighbours have. Were you trying to prove anything on this album? No. If I want to prove anything, it's to the people who are close to me, the people I love. But if I can share something I enjoy with the public, that's great. In fact, I'm impatient to get back on stage and communicate with the people who liked the album. When you were writing some of the songs, did you remember the way Gainsbourg used to work alongside you? He used to write things when I was around, but he never gave me any tips! It's very hard to use someone else's technique. And even more horrible to try and copy it. It loses its sincerity, its authenticity. When I wrote the songs on the album, I dipped into Gainsbourg's to reassure myself, without trying to pinch his style. That would have been pointless. Do you know how many albums you've sold to date? Not exactly. Over 200,000 I think. Have you met your target? I didn't have a target. My record company does, of course, but I can't do anything about that.