But try as hard as you may, when money gets involved, it becomes less pure.”Campbell admits to being an idealist, loves anything French, and Sixties pop (although she also likes Air and Nick Cave). She attempted to forge her own identity while still in B&S, with two solo albums under the guise of The Gentle Waves “I needed a bit of protection, back then,” Campbell says. “But it felt right to use my own name this time – like the French singers who inspire me – Fran?se Hardy and Jacques Brel, and my friends were saying to me that I should defend my work.”Interestingly, the soft and tender Amorino was released the same month – October – as B&S’s starkly contrasting album Dear Catastrophe Waitress in which the band has gone louder and more mainstream with the help of Trevor Horn, the Frankie Goes to Hollywood producer. But, it seems, it is Campbell who is staying true to the tweeness (like it or not) of the Belle & Sebastian good old days. In fact, she sounds so wet you only hope no loud bangs happen at the gig. It became apparent to me that we were going to become this rock machine, and tour a lot.

But the support wasn’t there within the band for me to continue. Some people say: ‘Oh, you need a bit of tension in a band,’ but I don’t really go for that In the beginning we just played for the love of playing. “The first six months [in Belle & Sebastian] were like a honeymoon – gorgeous But … after the first album, Tiger Milk, things became messy and difficult. “But I am playing with fairytale imagery which, like nursery rhymes, can be very, very, dark I think a lot of people can miss that,” she says. “I even get heavy metal fan mail.”The “on and off” (she says dismissively) ex-girlfriend of B&S’s Stuart Murdoch, says that leaving the band, formally in May 2002, was the best decision she made.

At the beginning of the week, she performed her first gig in London for three years and on 17 December she will be playing Glasgow. She has also just released a solo album, Amorino, (the first time she’s released something under her own name). The sound on the album can be annoyingly “sweet” and is, in fact, strangely redolent of the artwork on the cover sleeve – pink and girlie with butterflies lolloping about. It’s the kind of music you expect from somebody with My Little Ponies and stickerbooks everywhere.

But underneath the easy listening indie-pop are unsettling instrumental touches by Adrian Utley – the guitarist of Portishead – and a duet with Eugene Kelly (who will also be performing with her in Glasgow) formerly of The Vaselines and a Kurt Cobain favourite.”If it sounds pretty, people get a bit freaked out,” Campbell says “It is like the artwork. Some people have gone: ‘Pink – eurgh! Pink – yuck!’” she says looking squeamish. She even wrote one of their best songs, “Is it Wicked Not to Care?”
But after seven years in the comfort of B&S – one of Scotland’s most respected indie bands (now heading mainstream) – she bewildered music fans worldwide by leaving the gang (who conjure up happy-clappy campfires and no-fixed-abode bohemian ramblings).Now she has returned. Whatever happened to Belle & Sebastian’s former cellist and soloist, the dreamy Isobel Campbell? Her photograph – taken by her ex-boyfriend, the lead singer Stuart Murdoch, and making her look like a French film star – was used on the band’s album cover. But Lee and Lifeson still protect him, which is why they don’t expect him to face interviews in which upsetting questions might arise.Earlier this year, both Lee and Lifeson turned 50.