Everyone has a horror story. He won’t allow you to look him in the eye, he won’t let you ask any questions, he’ll talk in such a tiny whisper you won’t be able to hear him, he’ll ask you for one of your pubic hairs (more of that later) or he simply won’t say anything at all.

The sense of foreboding isn’t lifted when I first catch sight of him: a slight, fragile, almost pantomime prince circled by a herd of heavy breathing security men. The group parts and he steps forward, wordlessly offering his hand. There’s a faint crack as our fingers grip, and for a moment I fear I’ve squeezed his delicate bones too hard, but the sound is simply his white five-inch platform heels clacking together.

He ushers me into a small dressing room backstage at a TV studio where he’s been rehearsing. Drifting in behind, he silently closes the door. “Please, sit wherever you like,” he says in a voice so improbably deep that I instinctively look around for a minder. But there is no one, no manager, no over-protective PR, just the two of us in a room, 6ft by 10ft, cold, sterile and industrial grey.

This is not a man who likes giving interviews. In fact, he stopped altogether around 1983, after becoming increasingly disenchanted with the media’s interest in his sexual proclivities and X-rated content of his songs. In the past few years, however, there has been a gradual thawing, which has led to him granting the occasional audience. Today, he slides himself comfortably in the sofa opposite. With legs crossed, he smooths his white flared pants with a slender palm and dangles a white stilettoed foot, patting the air expectantly with his toe. Rhythmically of course.

And then he starts talking, chatting even. And as he talks, he grins, he grimaces, he jokes, he laughs at himself and naturally he flirts, letting his white fur-trimmed jacket slip off his shoulder to reveal a hint of flesh before he slides it back up, just far enough so that it slowly slips down again.

He is, of course, the prince of tease. His songs drip with sexual innuendo and eroticism. “People hear the sex in my songs much more than I ever write it,” he pouts with camp outrage. “If you listen to the words in Sexy MF, you’ll see they’re about monogamy rather than promiscuous sex.”

He can hardly claim misinterpretation, though, of songs such as Soft And Wet, Scarlet Pussy and Jack U Off. Or Head, the lascivious slab of funk from his 1980 album Dirty Mind.

“Well yes, the choruses in that song are about, erm, sex,” he concedes briefly before flashing an impish grin, “but there are verses too.”

His good humour is as intoxicating as it is surprising. In the past two years, he’s faced record company wrangles, falling sales, waning interest and, in October 1996, the loss of his child. Known only as Boy Gregory, the son of Prince and his wife, Mayte Garcia, lived for just a few days after being born with a skull deformity known as Pfeiffer syndrome.

Top of the Pops, 28 February 1997.

“That time has been the most traumatic of my life,” Prince acknowledges, “but contrary to what has been said about me, I feel very positive. I believe God has a plan. Everything that happens, there’s a reason for it.”

But surely, what plan, what reason can there be behind the death of a few-days-old child? “There are so many ways to look at things,” he replies softly. “And I would never use the words, ‘they’re gone’. They will always come back you see,” he adds, never once dropping his gaze.

His words are delivered with their usual vagueness, a diaphanous web of phrases that are both smokescreen and honest truth. Talking to Prince is like being in the presence of a magician. He weaves tales, ideas and personal philosophies into an extravagant mesh of thoughts, which make absolute sense when you’re there, but walk away and you’re hard put to reassemble the ideas. It’s not helped by Prince’s refusal to let journalists use tape recorders – although I am allowed a notebook.

So he talks at length about how he’s striving to achieve a spiritual level, a time and place where everyone is equal, where there is no bigotry nor prejudice. He talks about 27 being the most important year of anyone’s life, about how he wants to bring together the male and female sides of himself and others, to marry the two genders. This union he signifies with his symbol, which he has adopted as his name.

Ah yes, the symbol, one of the strangest and most ridiculed career decisions in music. “People claim it was a publicity stunt,” he says with a resigned smile. “It wasn’t at all. I mean, if it had been, it hardly worked, did it? I haven’t exactly had good publicity from it. The simple fact is I never called myself The Artist. That is not my name. I ain’t Tafkap, I mean it’s hardly snappy, is it? Someone else called me that. My name is…” (he makes the shape of his symbol in the air).

Prince performing at the Brit Awards in 1997. Photograph: Richard Young/REX/Shutterstock

“OK, the way I am is unpronounceable, but why should I make it easy? So people call me The Artist, The Artist Formerly Known As Prince, Tafkap, why should I put the record straight? I’m amused by it all. It’s like the stories that I make people call me Boss. That’s untrue. The only people who call me Boss are those who feel the need to, which says a lot about them.”

As he explains, he laughs. And as he laughs, he seems to acknowledge the preposterousness of having a name that no one can pronounce. To a point. Five years on, his name is still a subject he’s fiercely sensitive about. There are stories of him cutting conversations dead when someone calls him Prince, and he readily admits he has no interest in anyone whose first question to him is: “What shall I call you?”

He remains unrepentant, even if he’s in danger of being remembered more for the squiggle than for the songs. “The reason I changed my name was because I heard a voice telling me to. Was it God’s voice? Who knows. It may have been some higher self, maybe God, or maybe someone within me. It was a very frightening time. I was thinking, if I accept this voice, what will it mean? But slowly, gradually, I started to get the answers. And the answer was, this is who I should be.

“I know that my life changed from that point. That’s why I am now happy. It was at that time, when I changed my name, that I started to understand how to master happiness.”

One day I might write the book about the hardships artists face. It's incredible that you write songs and don't own them

The secret of how to master happiness, according to Prince, is to learn to look at things positively, to rid oneself of negativity and to learn from one’s mistakes. In Prince’s case, this was his former record contract with Warner Music, which he finally disentangled himself from in 1996.

“I’ve said a lot about my dissatisfaction with the contract at that time, but ultimately it was my choice to sign the record deal. I was tempted by the carrot dangled in front of me, the carrot I call my pink Cadillac. Now that pink Cadillac was very appealing, but it was going down the wrong road. So now, I’ve corrected my mistake.”

He grins, in fact he positively beams, as he talks of watching awards ceremonies where artists thank their record companies in their acceptance speeches. “I sit there thinking, you wait, you’ll see,” he laughs without a hint of bitterness. Of course, hindsight is a marvellous faculty (this is the man after all who wrote “Slave” on his face during his record company dispute).

As he is at pains to stress at all times, he is happy. Now. But he wasn’t. “There was a time when I didn’t want to conform, I just didn’t want to play the games. I did an interview with an American journalist. Halfway through, I asked her if she would pluck me one of her pubic hairs. She was outraged,” he pauses for a beat, “and rightly so. I wasn’t a happy person then. It was around the time of Lovesexy and that was not a good time. I nearly lost it at that time.” Just a few months before the release of his Lovesexy album in May 1988, he had withdrawn, at the very last moment, a different project known as The Black Album. Thousands were pressed up and waiting to be shipped. But Prince changed his mind. He felt it was too dark, too bleak. He describes it now as offering no hope and no relief. Lovesexy had a very different message: suggesting America turn to faith and religion to save itself from crime and drug problems. His lavish and hugely expensive Lovesexy tour promoting the album sold out in Europe, but was less successful in America and lost money. That same year, he fired his long-term managers, lawyers and accountants.

So what did make him so unhappy? His body suddenly stiffens. “That’s not important now,” he snaps, retreating on his confession. Then, just as quickly his voice softens. “What does matter is that I am happy now.”

His celebratory mood he puts down to no longer being signed to a record company and finally being able to own some of the rights to his own music. It’s something that has taken him 17 years to achieve and is still an incredibly rare situation in the music industry. His first “free” album, Emancipation, he says earned him more money after six months in the shops than any of his other albums for years, because he received so much more of the profits.

“One day I might write the book about the hardships artists face. It’s incredible that you write songs but don’t own the rights to them and someone else can do whatever they like with them. Still,” he pauses, “my soul is cast iron and not to be dented. I’ve been on the mountain top and seen what there is to see. I’ve been Number 1 and sold huge amounts of records. My main concern is that I can now enjoy being a musician again.”

On paper, it seems hard to believe this can be the happiest time of his life. In person, he’s more convincing. Then again, throughout his career he’s created different personalities for himself: Camille on If I Was Your Girlfriend and alter egos Jamie Starr, Joey Coco and Alexander Nevermind when writing songs for others. It’s only natural to suspect that this show of friendliness and candour may be another role he’s playing at this point in his life.

Yet today, his extraordinary ordinariness suggests not. As I get up to leave, he leans forward and, probably for the 30th time during our conversation, smiles. “I think, yes, I know I’m happy. I have all I need.”