M: When I walk onto a set I feel... When they can put anything onto me and I can become that image, I feel I've accomplished being a chameleon... being whoever they want me to be.

B: Why would you feel that you can take on the identity that someone is dictating to you? Do you feel you're earning their affection or their love in some way?

M: Oh...! I dunno. Maybe.

B: I think all art is for the dysfunctional. Painters, singers, models... To a lesser or greater degree some part of their life is dysfunctional. And they try and explore that or fulfil their denial... I think it's bizarre to stand up in front of people and show off. I really do.

M: I'm not a natural show-off.

B: Not consciously.

Q: [To Bowie] When you think of the Ziggy trans-gender experiment, do you feel that was dysfunctional? Are you still proud of that?

B: A lot of young people go through that. I just happened to be in a very public place. It's not anathema to me. I was finding my sexuality and being... very promiscuous.

M: Slag!

B: Basically, yeah. I was a sex tourist. There wasn't anything I didn't want to try. It felt exciting to take on these different identities and make it a sexual thing. I couldn't just put on a pair of jeans. I had to think, "Why do we put on jeans in the first place?" To attract someone for a sexual encounter! When you're older they are just for keeping your legs warm. I was very excited by sex. I really enjoyed it. Looking back I'm quite proud of what I did. I realise how odd it was now with hindsight.

M: Did you know that you were pushing it, changing things?

B: Yes. It was a night down your neck of the woods, actually. The Greyhound in Croydon. It was the first gig the press came to. Roxy Music were supporting. Brian Eno and me were talking in the middle of this pub and he was on his intellectual thing. And I remember my mind drifting off and thinking, "He's right. It's us and Roxy Music. What have we done? We've just killed the '60s!" It really felt like that. I walked out on a cloud. It didn't matter if we worked again. It came together that night in Croydon!

Visconti wants Bowie to go to work. The icon summit is over. Mick Rock, '70s Bowie photographer and video-maker, has given Moss some prints which she wants to get signed. In return Moss has promised to pass Rock's love on to "Auntie Doris". Moss says the pictures will go in the bathroom at home in London where she has a gallery of rock gods. So far she has Sid Vicious and The Rolling Stones. This print of Bowie in a light blue suit is perfect. "Cos our bathroom is light blue," she says. "Poor sod, he needs feeding up," remarks Bowie looking at a print of himself as Aladdin Sane.

They agree to meet up again the next time she's in New York and Bowie sees her downstairs to a cab. Afterwards he comes back and says, "Wasn't she just lovely? Part of you thinks, Oh God, bloody models! But she's adorable."

He did one of these three-way interviews back in '74 for Rolling Stone. That time it was William Burroughs. "Bill was even skinnier than me," he notes. It's gratifying to have met a young woman who is such a fan but he's sanguine about it. He doesn't think it's just the music, the timeless Bowie imagery. "I know full well what it is," he smiles, a glint in that alien eye. "It's the mums. You always find it's the mums who are putting in a word for me."