What it's like being on Jools' Hootenanny with a pissed Ainsley Harriott

It’s been noted anywhere and everywhere that it took La Roux six years to release her third album Supervision, the follow-up to 2014’s Trouble In Paradise.

Listening to this, that makes complete sense. It was a period of some turbulence – breakups and stark realisations – that finally gave way to a new, shackle-free chapter for Elly Jackson.

Sat on her living room sofa – a giant gold palm tree (very La Roux) looming over us – we talked about pain and fear and bitterness and self-protection: many of the ups (The Grammys, Dr Dre samples) and downs (label disputes, her struggles to earn the respect she deserves as a songwriter) of the past decade. Plus, what it’s like going on Jools Holland’s Hootenanny with a pissed Ainsley Harriott in the audience.

Now though she’s in a better place, mentally and physically: downstairs is the music studio she’s just finished building, a tangible symbol of Elly Jackson’s future ambitions.

“La Roux is not going to be an old person’s game,” she says late in the podcast. “I don’t want to be on stage at 65 on stage singing ‘In For The Kill’. It’s not my vibe. I don’t want to be doing that to anybody else, or myself.”

Available on all decent podcast platforms. You can also listen below: