After 50 years in fashion, the designer is having new adventures. He discusses love, work, Madonna – and why Eurotrash couldn’t be made now

Jean Paul Gaultier is waving his hands and talking nineteen to the dozen in French with a smattering of heavily accented English. I’ve only been with him for a few minutes, and already he is tearing through his thoughts on love, life, death and London, punctuated with self-deprecating comments and shrieks of laughter, as if we have known each other for ever.

We are supposed to be talking couture; he is after all fashion’s anointed “enfant terrible”, the designer celebrated for dressing Madonna in a conical bra corset, popularising skirts – well, kilts – for boys and turning the French navy’s famous marinière striped T-shirt into a wardrobe classic.