Humility doesn't really suit Alexander McQueen, but you have to admire him for trying it on for size. 'I wasn't ever... What's the word? Arrogant enough to think any of this would happen to me,' he says, ostensibly in response to the panel's accolade, but also, clearly, in acknowledgment of his last 10 years in the business.

'I didn't plan out my life like that,' he says. 'When people recognise and respect what you do, that's nice, but I don't think you ever do this to be famous. Fame should be left to the film stars. We're just offering a service.'

It's hard to know whether McQueen actually believes this. To date, he hasn't done much to make such pronouncements seem sincere. As incredible a headline-spinner as he is a talent, Lee Alexander McQueen has embraced his rep as the fashion industry's most terrible of enfants. 'I was never a big networker, but I was a spin doctor, all those shock shows, that's how I got my first backers. But fashion's a scary industry to be in, especially if you've not grown up with it.' And as the youngest of six children born to an East End cabbie, McQueen really didn't. 'So it's like getting into a relationship. You do things like that, put up your defences just to test how much that other person loves you. It took 10 years - and I've had a seven-year itch - but we're still together.'

It's changed him a lot, he admits, 'from an East End yob spin doctor into a very sensible person.' So the shock shows have gone, but the collections are still winning him awards and plaudits and his creative process is pretty much the same. He doesn't really 'work at work - I work 24/7, all the fucking time. For the next show, I was just getting into my car and something caught my eye, and that was the whole end section for the last show.'

Adrenaline and stress are McQueen's creative crutches. 'I get blocked all the time, but I work best under pressure. I can design a collection in a day and I always do, 'cos I've always got a load of Italians on my back, moaning that it's late.' He is inspired by artists, Sam Taylor-Wood and Rebecca Horn, by musicians, by 'everything that rocks my world', but not by other designers. 'I never look at other people's work. My mind has to be completely focused on my own illusions.'

He claims his main concern is the customer and when he says things like that, you have to suspect that the old style, mad, bad McQueen has been reduced by his newish association with ultra-conventional Gucci.

Two years ago, he was struggling through his tenure as head designer at Givenchy. 'It was like going to school every morning,' he says. 'You didn't want to go. Your mum and dad kick you out: "Come on, get to school!" That's what it was like. It showed me where I didn't want to be.'

On learning that Tom Ford, creative director of Gucci, fancied him both professionally and personally, McQueen (who now admits he had been courting the brand illicitly, allowing himself to be photographed dancing at a club in a linked-G fedora) defected to the group, amid total furore. At Gucci, he began to concentrate uniquely on his own label, Alexander McQueen, to very good effect. He also got to enjoy Ford's unstinting support.

'For me there is a poetic quality to Lee's work. He is a true artist, albeit an artist with real commercial savvy,' Ford says.

You can't help but feel that Ford and Gucci's CEO, Domenico De Sole, rescued McQueen. So maybe it shouldn't be surprising that the man who famously has never been able to stomach the establishment in any incarnation, who sewed 'I am a cunt' into the lining of a jacket for Prince Charles, who publicly dissed David Beckham ('That man is vainer than the veins running through my dick'), and who begged Givenchy to fire him in an interview for Arena, has gone a little corporate. He now chooses to ditch his signature chunky thug aesthetic in favour of a groomed, Ford-like sleekness and has launched Kingdom, his first fragrance, in a highly Gucci-fied gesture. 'It's all about the dollar or the euro. I've never been bankrupt,' he explains, smoothly.

McQueen doesn't court celebrity clients in the style of his equally publicity hungry contemporary, Julien Macdonald, 'because if they look crap, they take you down with them, and what's the point?' And he thinks the key to being a relevant designer is 'knowing when to bail out.'

So he won't be doing this forever? 'God, no. I wasn't born on to this planet to be a complete stitch bitch all my life. Photographers go into film, models go into acting, fashion designers become presidents. I think I should be a president. President of the United States. Anything's better than him. Get me my green card!'