Her $60m annual Las Vegas residency was off the cards this year, but the singer still has lots to say about animal rights, Trump’s ‘toxic’ politics, cosmetic surgery and the men in her life

The Goddess of Pop is in town. And what an entrance she makes. Two-tone black-and-white beret, matching jacket, skinny jeans, black boots, black mask, and an elephant-shaped knuckle-duster. She looks the ultimate in revolutionary chic – Cher Guevara. She is not in London to promote a record (100m sold and counting) or a film (she won the best actress Oscar in 1988 for Moonstruck); she is here to talk about rescuing the world’s loneliest elephant from a zoo in Pakistan and flying him to a sanctuary in Cambodia. Cherilyn Sarkisian, aged 74, has never been predictable.

We meet in a London hotel, close to the BBC’s Broadcasting House, where she has been eulogising elephants. She is masked, I am masked, and we sit at opposite ends of the room. It’s such a strange world we’re living in, I say – how are you coping? And she is straight off into a turbo-charged rant. “How am I taking it? There are no words that describe it. And in my country the president doesn’t believe it has anything to do with him. He doesn’t think he has any responsibility to help us.”