Pop's $570 million woman! 

has baked me a cake. It looks like Jamaican ginger cake – she calls it ‘pumpkin loaf’ – nestled inside a linen pouch bag embroidered with a cartoon wooden spoon, which she also made. She’s aware I’m alone and 6,000 miles from home, meeting her in a bistro in Beverly Hills (no PR, management or security involved), ‘and I thought there’d be nothing homey for you here in a different country’.

It’s 2013 and 23-year-old Swift is not only an accomplished baker and craftswoman (and the kind of celebrity, uniquely, who woos reporters with gifts) but the most successful young pop star on Earth, a consistent Guinness World Record breaker already worth a Forbes-estimated $220 million (£143 million). She’s warm, smart and strikingly tall, 5ft 11in of retro chic in a strawberry-print dress and winged eyeliner. Over pretzels she contemplates the lessons the pop life has taught her.

‘What I’ve learnt recently,’ she says, ‘is if you reach a certain point where things are going very well, public perception needs a “yeah, but…” Like, “yeah, but she’s been on a lotta dates, apparently”; “yeah, but I hear she’s crazy”. It has a lot to do with being a woman. I resent that. That there has to be some downside to your personality or lifestyle if you’re a woman and successful. But I can’t control that. The only things I can control are the songs that I write and how I present myself. Stay focused on actually living a decent life. The rest? If I focused on it, insanity. And that’s not on my list of priorities: going crazy!’