Puppy love

It's a response you might expect from a parent of a free-spirited child, but it comes as something of a surprise when the young violinist Vanessa Mae says of her mother: "I've heard from other people that she is doing really well." Doesn't she speak to her mother? After all, until last year Pamela Mae had been constantly at her daughter's side, acting as her co-manager and general aide-de-camp since Vanessa's career took off.

Then suddenly their long-standing professional relationship was over. The former prodigy had effectively sacked her, although Vanessa doesn't like the way the press described the parting of the Maes. She prefers to see it as a chance for both women to move on. "The idea was for her to get her life back. But she's busier than ever."

And Vanessa, who will be 22 this month, isn't exactly sitting around twiddling her thumbs. A collection of some of her earliest recordings - from the age of 12 - has just been re-released and she is working on the next album, due for a spring release to tie in with her international tour.

It seems as if the last 18 years have been a non-stop round of recitals, recordings and publicity for her. Doesn't she ever stop? "Well, I've just come back from a two-week holiday to Singapore. It was my grandmother's 70th birthday so I was able to see some of my family. There are lots of high achievers and lots of shops, but I don't think I'd like to live there now. Singapore is really quite strict."

In London, where she has just moved into her own Kensington apartment a few minutes away from her parents' home, there is no one to tell her what to do any more. Even Vanessa Mae had to be nagged to practise her violin. "I always did my practice so I could do other things afterwards," she says. "I used to play quartets with Graham (her "second father", whom Pamela married after divorcing Vanessa's father, Thai hotelier Vorapong Vanakorn, when Vanessa was four) but I hardly do that any more.

"I like reading. I've read several books by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I loved One Hundred Years Of Solitude and I'd like to read it in Spanish one day. I took a few lessons a long time ago. I also have a black shar pei puppy called Gaspar, which means 'treasure keeper' in Persian."

Before Gaspar there was Gaston, Vanessa explains, dogs being one topic she is keen to chat about. "He was the serious love of my life and he used to come everywhere with me. But he ran out of the studio one day and got hit by a cyclist. I found him in a car park, but a few days later his little heart had given up. When Gaston died, I said I wouldn't have another one but everybody who knew me knew I would. I'm not ready for babies - but I'm ready for puppies."

How her boyfriend of 18 months, Lionel Catelan, feels about puppies she doesn't say. She only says of her beau - who lives in France and is the son of the mayor of Val d'Isere - "We're together and see each other, but not a lot at the moment."

Vanessa is a mixture of contradictions. She is famous for combining classical music with revealing outfits and, as a result, has sold more than five million records. She juxtaposes Beethoven with Mancini and Tchaikovsky with Rogers and Hammerstein. Physically, she is gorgeous; she has hardly changed in the seven years since she stormed to fame. She is taller than you might imagine, and slender, wearing the strappiest of tops to show off the saplings that pass for arms, and she has an engaging smile.

She comes across as someone who, in the nicest way, is used to getting what she wants. But if it all finished tomorrow, she wouldn't be stuck for things to do. "I might go to university, to study history or classical civilisation," she ponders.

Pamela and Graham were able to give their only daughter many opportunities. Born in Singapore, Vanessa still has an accent, despite having spent all but two years of her life in London - though she also spent six months in China when she was eight. "My violin teachers wanted me to learn the Yankelovich method and there were only two countries where I could learn it, Siberia and China. So I thought I would go to Beijing because I am half Chinese.

"When I went I couldn't speak a word of Chinese. I stayed in a hotel where the staff secretly allowed me to keep some animals.

I had a hedgehog and some laboratory mice. I was a zookeeper as well as a music student, and quite a cocky little eight-year-old. At the end of the course, my grandmother had to drag me screaming to the plane.

"I don't think the music was planned. My parents just wanted as many possibilities as possible. I had tennis and skiing lessons and Graham, who plays viola as an amateur, encouraged me to take up the violin. It just happened that I excelled in music."

Her record company, EMI, clearly believes it is on to a winner with Vanessa and has signed her to both their classical and pop divisions. Vanessa is well aware of the sniping that has followed her since she started recording. Her former teacher at the Royal College of Music called her a "a true prodigy". But Sir John Drummond, former director of Radio 3, famously asked: "Why do we have to have Vanessa Mae?" Vanessa's retort is, naturally, well rehearsed. "People buy my records for the music, not the cover. I never limited myself to making music for one kind of person."

The three-CD Classical Collection Part 1 (Vanessa Mae's early recordings) is out now on EMI records, cat no CMS 5674562.